


a queen in the ruins

by maladictive



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-09
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2019-06-07 16:13:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15222884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maladictive/pseuds/maladictive
Summary: Here follows a tale of love, grief, knowledge, and the importance of translating verbs correctly.





	a queen in the ruins

_“And the princess faced the monster alone, she turned her back on the dead and she turned her back on her own heart, and then she walked up to her own castle and tied herself up in it,”_ the old woman says, her face grim but in a practiced way, lit up by the campfire. The storm rages on outside the cave.

“How’d she tie herself in the castle, Granny?”

The child can’t be much older than five, but she’s almost cruelly small. He can see the tiny pinpricks of bone in her hands and wrists, and if he had more food than he had already piled in front of them he would push more towards her. He runs a hand through his rain-soaked hair and listens for the old woman’s answer. There’s not much else to do for them now besides stay awake and pay attention.

“I don’t quite know, child. Some people say it was a last burst of her birthright’s power, others say she stole the hero’s great sword and sent him away to safety, praying that at the very least he could be saved. Those who tell the story that way say the princess used that stolen sword to seal away the calamity,” she explains.

He has heard this story approximately four times in full. Everyone has a different vision of the events in their version, in their imagination of the Calamity. Some tell it like a great love story-- a doomed romance with a tragic end between the princess and her brave knight. Others tell it more hopefully, reminding those gathered that the hero lived, that he remains alive to this day, waiting to avenge his fallen lover. Those with many young ones gathered round tended to be less concerned with the romantic spin and more concerned with appeasing the incessant questions.

Some tellers mix the two methods up, ending somewhere between love lost and some obscure triumphant return. And of course there are those who know that they do not know, like this wizened woman before him. That’s the version of the tale that terrifies him most, though he does not care to show it. The thought that swirling around him is a truth no one will ever grasp, that he will never know, because the only two people who can tell the truth can’t ever speak it. He, silent, with his memories lost to time, and her, locked away somewhere in that castle.

He throws a bow that fired its last arrow earlier that evening onto the flames and looks over at his guests again. The old woman asks if he’d like to hear another story and he shakes his head and shrugs. _If you’d like,_ he tries to convey. It’s hard. Sometimes his hands almost move on their own, as if in a language of forgotten motion, but he doesn’t know what it is they try to say. He keeps them still in his lap, and smiles more gently when the small girl begs for another story about the great hero.

Link itches to wield the fabled and legendary sword that now lies in a bag secured tightly to the horse at the cave’s mouth. He often feels an inexplicable longing to return to the spot he pulled it from, to the great tree that spoke to him, that seemed to know him like no one else knew him. He sometimes gives in to the urge, finding his way back through the lost and drifting fog to find the hollow of pink flowers and enormous roots. He sits there quietly for hours and nurses his bleeding wounds in the quiet, surrounded by a calming silence broken only by the odd giggles of the Koroks and the bell-like sighs of their fairy neighbors.

He aches to recall the moment with the same clarity each time, but all that waits for him is a memory of a memory and a steady, aching fondness for the terrified girl that had forced the sword into the stone one hundred years ago.

And though the landscape inside him is rugged and ravaged with the labyrinthine effects of doubt and loss, the feeling is strong and immovable. He knows with stunning clarity that the princess didn’t turn her back on anything or anyone. And if she did, it was only to face the beast and preserve whatever she left behind her. The Great Tree’s last words to her ring in his ears, and he knows that she always planned to see him again. 

He has faith in her, and he knows that has never changed.

* * *

 

She senses above her many lights, though in the beginning they aren’t important. At first it’s only a sensation of presence, or the memory of a presence, and she can bury the intuitions deep under her grief. For her grief consumes her and eats away at everything else.

After a decade or two her mourning eases and her mind clears and the lights occupy her senses, no longer pushed to the edge of her attention. They had called to her incessantly for ages, but their urgency heightened as her feelings calmed (only to stir again at the faintest glance at her father’s throne, at her mother’s ruined memorial gardens, at the stairs she’d skip up so confidently as a child).

“Look,” they’d say. “Listen!” they’d tell her. “Come see,” they seemed to chant. So after months become years, after the stone of the hallways become hollowed out beneath her wandering feet and the beast bores itself with booming and writhing around her, harmlessly and noxiously by turns, she begins to pay attention.

The first thing she does is catch a tendril of smoking light and steal it away to a dark corner. To investigate it more closely, she tells herself. The castle’s crumbling exterior always succumbs to the light; it shows her the shape of ruin and gore, so she tends to avoid the sun and all it reveals. She finds it easier to focus on keeping the beast at bay when she isn’t fighting the monsters of the past as well. These small things, however, won’t show anything by their weak light.

But the moment her eyes focus to the shape of the glow, to its form and its oddly pulsating red color she realizes too late that it is deeply mixed with Ganon’s own essence. It feels like being thrown into the icy waters of a sea, then thrust into a flame and dragged through it to whatever lay on the other side. She sees, when she opens her eyes against the onslaught of sensations, a beautiful hollow of rock and cool, night air. Not the castle floor, not the towers or the expanses of polished stone that mark what was her home once.

The mountains crack in this space, and a tree with pink blossoms grows from what looks like a happenstance collection of rainwater. She looks closer and sees a face looking back at her, peering out of a small world of life, and then another face, and wherever she turns there are golden eyes peering into her. Dragonflies, flowers, moss, frogs, fish, glowing rabbits and golden fungus; the small world of that space overtakes her for a moment and she loses herself tracing the oddly unwieldy veins of a frog.

Then the impossible face in the middle of everything glows faintly and draws all her attention. The sight pulls her out of her trance and she sees the world as it is to a person, to whatever she was before she found this, and then again as an interconnected mess of veins and eyes and pulses and small connections of electricity snapping and firing and connecting faster than she can track.

Rapidly switching between bodies, water, and the skeletal structures that captivate her attention, she tries to maintain eye-contact with two pairs of eyes set into a face both human and beast. Part owl, part antlered steed, and part human, the being before her is absolutely aware and intelligent, and it gazes at her knowingly. Almost accusingly.

She feels the age-old weeping begin again and she hunches over the mirror-like surface of the water (thousands of small particles held together and moving together and breaking apart and coming back to each other) and stares into it. The monster’s power weaves itself into the life of the land and she has done nothing to stop it, can do nothing to stop it. She contained it's presence in the castle and became blind to the extent of its full reach, blind to her true purpose. The lights around her are splintered through with dark ash, red embers… Ganon’s strength and direction permeates everything. She feels him everywhere.

With her mind’s newfound sight she finds another light and looks upon a hillside through it. A perfect circle of stones seems to grow out of the earth. Slowly, with painstaking focus, she reaches out for a stone, a sudden urge to break the pattern overwhelming her. She feels, dimly, her shoulder hit a wall somewhere else.

 _Where_? Oh, back in the castle. She finds herself there again; her shoulder throbbing and her somehow-still-a body slumped against a wall.

 

She still avoids the pillaged ceilings when she can, and the shadows of the castle and the shadows of the beast. But time is no longer lost to her, though it trudges on and on without her. She finds her old study, the one she retreated to whenever things got too much and yet just enough below the threshold of crisis that she could take a moment alone.

Or not alone. She remembers a flash of hair like wheat and a slow but firm smile, a steady presence at her side and—

Careful to foresee when grief will rear its head, she settles herself into where a good armchair, now a very bad armchair, once stood and reaches above her for the lights, diving back into the land beyond her castle and resisting the urge to lose herself in every blade of grass and every beat of a butterfly’s wings.

There is another circle of stones, perfectly arranged around her, with the exception of one. This time she’s almost physically present within them. She reaches out of the space and tries to move one stone, and with all her strength she yanks it from the earth and watches its small guardian spirit stand transfixed and almost betrayed. She sees it realize her, and with a great effort, she tries to impart a feeling of calm and understanding. It disappears with a creaking laugh, and the stone remains out of place. She leaves it there, her attention shifting to the glowing shrine in the fog ahead.

She remembers a forest overcome with mist and dense obscurity, and with that instant realization, finds herself at the foot of the great tree she had bid farewell years and years ago. He shivers and seems to stir at her presence. She stills him in passing, her eyes on that sword still buried in the earth before her. Right where she left it.

With a sudden conviction she looks to the setting sun, and with that she overlooks the top of a mountain split into three peaks, watching the moon cast its beams down like a fisherman’s net into a lake. She reaches for more light, and it is in abundance around her, easier to reach than ever.

She distinctly remembers a deep pain at a report of the Silent Princess’s recession from Hylian lands and recalls earnestly describing to the princess of the Zora what such a flower could do for healers caught tending the wounded mid-battle. She remembers Link’s face when she pointed it out to him, grieved that she was grieved, unsettled by her pain—

She finds the correct strand of light, no longer above her head or floating around her, at her hands and between her fingers, and pulls it free. She remains there for a long time, beyond the mountain peak, feeling the icy clarity of flowers as they returned to the earth.

 

* * *

 

Link keeps an eye on the road behind them as he guides the woman and the child to a nearby town’s inn, where the woman’s eldest son stands weeping over their dripping, exhausted, and safe forms. Link waves off all attempts at payment, but the man firmly grabs him with a grip like iron and shoves a solid silver rupee into his palm. Link knows better than to throw it back in his face. He uses a portion to buy a bed for the night, pays the innkeeper to load as much as possible onto the child’s plate come morning, and saves the rest to restock on supplies.

The next morning, when he sets out again, he finds that his mind will not stray far from the story he had heard last night. It unsettles him, that the stories always affect him so; it makes him feel like a figment of imagination, like he was thrown straight out of the ballads and into the world, without a memory of life or self or purpose.

The stories lead him to the great stone slabs in the Zora’s domain, watching the lights reflect off of weathered stone where the faint imprints of his name remain, to crowded inns to listen to those old folks who lost his name like sand in a stream but preserved his mannerisms like a bug in amber from tale to tale.

He wonders if there is a version of himself that he can uncover, that he will find somewhere between the towns and the monsters and the stories.

Every night he pulls out the map he’s agonized over for hours and hours and marks a new spot, referencing a photo Impa said Zelda took herself. He makes notes on the map with his finger, his body knowing how to use the slate without memories of having touched it before.

The stories haunt him the way bottomless caverns and monsters and blood-soaked moons don’t. The calamity is Hyrule’s beast, but his past is his own. With three divine monsters pointed at the castle and one left to calm, every now and then he has a moment of time to find himself amid the wreckage and the ruin, and what he finds always terrifies him.

But she’s always there. Sometimes he hears pieces of her voice, usually upon a close encounter with an enemy’s sword, or when a slaughtered foe rises again in full form, its flesh stitching back together as it stands. He almost grows to like the danger, to crave it, because it’s the only time he hears his name said with absolute certainty.

In the peace of the forest and the agony of the battlefield, he can hear her clearly, sometimes even remember her clearly. He tends to find himself there.

 

* * *

 

 

She scatters him across the land. It’s that or lose him forever. A bit longer, one more moment of hesitation, and she would have watched him fracture like glass hitting stone. Her old hesitance, her almost natural, unshakeable fears, they’re gone when it hits.

She senses it like a tear in the earth when his mind begins to fragment. Sometime in the decades she learned to separate a piece of herself so that she was always with him as he slumbered and healed. But she is utterly there in an instant, with a focus and presence that she cannot remember having before. This is the first moment that the effects of time become apparent to her. The force, and it was a force (how had she never noticed its waves and gusts, its elemental strength?), had battered him silently while she stood watching and blind.

She feels Ganon’s power push in the direction of a rotting corpse in a bog somewhere at the base of a mountain to the west and she borrows from it a strength she knows she doesn’t have and probably should not wield. That is what she uses to wrest from the night air the fragmenting mind of Link, her knight. And like a small girl holding a fallen bird out for her father to save, the king who could do anything— she holds the pieces gently but desperately close and reaches out for the light around her.

Zelda knows that it might have been kinder to let fate take its course on his mind and body both. But she is selfish and she does not want to lose everything. Her throne is gone, her family is gone, and her country lies in ruins. Her castle is a cage and she shares her country with a darker, more spectral king than anything her people had ever dreamed up in fairytales. All she has left is the knowledge she gathered when she was free and the land she had grown to know through it. But her knight is also hers, and she’ll fight to keep him.

Interesting, that something dormant in her always awoke when it was time to save him.

She plants the memories, tends them, and she realizes as she carries them and deposits them where he can reclaim each one that she had colored them all. A few she cannot look at too clearly, the memories of Mipha and his family are like diamonds in strength, and they take on no color but their own. But the memories of her seem to remember her in turn; she can’t help but color them with a kind of happiness, even those she is not proud of. But despite her haste she does not forget to seal the rest of his mind away. His essence, the part of him she found hidden under duty and silence, would be safe forever.

 

Perhaps a little too safe, she realizes years later, catching a glimpse of him running through Impa’s dignified halls with a chicken held high above his head as Paya nearly faints from horror. A bubbling thing comes out of her chest at the sight, and she notices a few apples dropping from the trees outside, ripened and bursting through their own skin with strength. She had laughed.

For the first time in a hundred years, she was laughing.

But it seems as though the laughter comes with a price to pay. For now it’s harder and harder for her to manifest. She urges life and strength towards Hyrule; towards the Silent Princesses and formations in the land they traveled and saw together, selfishly hoping that they’ll help him remember her. She becomes convinced that if he remembers her, she’ll regain her strength. That if she’s remembered, she’ll awaken her true power, and not this substitute cruelty that fate had given her instead. But he journeys on, and she grows ever weaker. Her seals slip and Ganon regains control at times, throwing her to the depths of the castle and further into her mind than ever.

She used to dream of a Link who would awaken to a world already free from calamity and war, but no matter how hard she tries, she can never manage to seal the beast completely. Link awakes to a catastrophe that she could never completely fix, that she was never strong enough to save him from.

She almost imagines that her end, no matter how it comes, will send her back to the earth so that in some way she’d be with him again. She sometimes contemplates throwing her fading essence into a passing bird, but it’s only a small, cruel thought that fades as soon as the beast demands her attention once more.

Soon, she tells herself, in one way or another this would all be over.

 

* * *

 

There isn’t a corpse to bury or a home to go back to, or a country to rule or a throne to reclaim, and though there is work to do, it feels very far away. She can’t completely move away from him yet, and he seems to be in quite the same situation. What began as euphoric laughter and relief that his memory (of her, he remembered her) was restored becomes a valiant and useless attempt to avoid soiling his armor with tears. Perhaps she is still a little tied up in Hyrule, because the oceans themselves seem to be leaking from her eyes.

She calms after a while, or maybe she dries the oceans up, but he doesn’t let her go. His arms are still around her as she looks at the remaining towers of her castle over his shoulder and finds herself treading the same paths she took a hundred years before, watching the weathered stone under her—

And then she's looking at his face.

It seems as though much time has past since she last saw him, though it couldn't have been more than a minute. He’s tapping her dripping cheeks rather rapidly, and his other arm is firmly holding her upright. She takes the moment to drink him in, not fully aware of what her body has just done.

Link is looking at her with a terrified but slightly put-upon expression, and though a century has passed, she still recognizes the face he reserves only for her particularly unique flirtations with danger. Usually on the grounds that he did not find her death a suitable exchange for a new sample of monster venom or a _very special_ kind of fungus, and she didn’t disagree, but things had to be done—

“I’m fine. It’s nothing. Just left for a moment, that’s all.”

He gestures with one hand at her shaking legs and lowers her to the grass carefully. She tries to push him away, suddenly very embarrassed about her tattered dress and dirty, tangled hair, but he gives her that look again and pushes what appear to be several kinds of mushroom roasted on a skewer at her.

They’re covered in soot, cold, and oddly musty. Before she can even consider rejecting the offer (she hasn’t eaten a single thing in a century, and now he wants her to try her luck with _unidentifiable fungi?_ She almost misses the days when this would anger her) he clicks his tongue in irritation and pulls out a small jar of what she realizes, as he unscrews the lid, is honeyed tea. Her throat tightens up and she buries her face in her hands, even as she can feel him beginning to panic again.

 

_She remembers sitting in an old lodge sometime before the beginning of it all and glaring at her entitled guard, who dared follow her on her father’s orders while disregarding hers, even though she was the one he directly reported to, anyway. She remembers the tightness in her throat, painfully taut, as she went over her last argument with her father. The feeling that somehow this boy was at the center of it all… it permeated her thoughts even then._

_She recalls the pain fading a little as the boy (for he was just a boy) dropped a small box of honeycomb before her. He did this and stomped away, silently, the only show of irritation he had made over the course of perhaps an hour of chastisement and (if she was honest with herself) undeserved blame. A little guiltily, Zelda brought the box closer and marveled at the clear and bright quality of the honey within. “Thank you, Link,” she said quietly, aware that her voice was a little ragged, and she saw him freeze and twitch a little as he set up the fire and began to roast whatever beast he had hunted hours earlier. He remains silent that night, and it would be very many nights of eating together before he would open up to her._

 

“Thank you, Link.” Her voice is still pathetic whenever emotion overtakes her. She peeks through her fingers at him, hoping that he is not very annoyed.

She sees that he is blushing. He pushes the tea into her hands and turns his head violently away. She becomes immediately more interested in a small sapling growing towards the bottom of a hill somewhere very, very far away from the castle. A sapling whose tiny trunk is already beset with a swarm of bees and whose tiny leaves are already providing shade for the tiniest of—

It’s her turn to _tsk_ when he snaps his fingers in front of her face, his expression only mildly less worried than it had been the first time.

“I’m fine, honestly. It’s just a bit of trouble with… with paying attention to one thing at a time.”

He raises an eyebrow, and apparently his memory really is intact, if he remembers enough to find it particularly dubious that such an issue is anything new to her.

She stands and brushes the blades of grass from her terrible dress and lifts her chin high. She tries to embody the old Queen Grandmama through the dust and dirt and imagines that the jar of tea in her hands is a ceremonial sword.

“I’m fine. Now. We really must plan our next move. It was really good of you to go ahead and take charge of reclaiming the Divine Beasts like that; it saves us so much trouble, we will have more credibility this way. You’re sure to be remembered and… I suppose we’ll have to figure out a way to prove I’m the Crown Princess. Though I imagine if we do the job well enough it won’t really matter _who_ I am because—“

She finds herself looming over glass-like stone towers of Mipha’s ancestral home, and she reaches out in an instinctive attempt to follow a stream of water towards the throne room she had circled a hundred times during her long life—

“Right. I seem to have a problem.”

She comes back to her body laid out flat on the grass, which must have been Link’s doing because she feels no pain anywhere. He had apparently felt confident enough in her health to attend to the more urgent matter of calling for his horse. His whistling feels tantamount to an icepick to the brain. She tells him as much, and he pauses only to point at the honeyed tea, which he had propped up pointedly on a clean cloth beside the mushroom… concoction.

She eats and drinks in silence, only switching from forest to forest between sips of tea. She suspects her dislike of the mushrooms prevents her from finding their origins with her mind. The whole experience seems to be manageable in small doses; she does not faint once and she remains upright the entire time.

Link returns with two horses, which explains the elaborate whistled tunes he had switched between despite her complaints, and she jumps to her feet at the sight of the gleaming golden steed outfitted in the royal bridle and saddle. Link looks very proud of himself, and so does her horse.

A little ashamed of herself, she admits to him that she hadn’t thought to check on her steed. She had left her horse at a stable before… before everything, and by the time she had surfaced, she hadn’t checked on the creature again.

Link looks at her with some confusion before she realizes that he does not know what has been happening inside or outside her head at all.

“I can go places with my mind. It's why I keep fading out, I've been doing it for about a century, it's a hard habit to break. It's like a link has been—oh, quiet. It’s not that funny— anyway, a _connection_ has been made between my mind and the world around us. I could even look after _you_. You were asleep, mostly.”

He looks horrified.

“Sometimes!" she cries in humiliation. "I was, after all, rather preoccupied with everything… else. It’s not as though I watched you constantly. I can only access the land, or animals, plants and the like. And I can’t always control what I see and what I don’t; it’s not an exact science... I managed to access the resurrection chamber somehow, but I believe that’s chiefly because a Korok decided your body warmth was comfortable.” He looks disturbed at this, but seems to accept it readily enough, and he even smiles a little teasingly as her blush deepens and her rant becomes gradually more alarming. “Don’t worry about your privacy. By the time you awoke I was so weak that I could not readily control where I manifested. I was mainly watching fish at the bottom of the ocean until recently. So don't. Uhm. Don't worry.”

He points at her and makes a sign, the first she’s seen him make so far. She distinctly remembers that it means something like ‘relax.’ Then he pauses, confused, and she hasn’t the time to be offended.

“So you do remember the signs? I wondered why you weren’t using them. We spent so long poring over those books and coming up with translations, you had better remember all that work!”

He signs _yes._ And still looks rather dumbfounded at having signed it.

She shrugs, glad that the focus has shifted away from the previous topic and onto something infinitely more interesting.

“Muscle memory, do you think? Instinct, maybe? Did I trigger this ability? You look so confused. Do you have memories of learning these signs? Do you remember the instructions I outlined in—?“

Link holds out the reins of the white horse to her and gestures impatiently for her to get on.

She takes his advice.

 

The ride is awkward at first, for she does not remember how to treat a horse. But his advice from a century ago still stands. She simply shows affection and respect to her steed and it soon grows to trust her. Sneaking it apples even after Link glares at her and signs that too many are not healthy definitely helps too. She renames the horse (Link had named it _Butter_ ) “Sunshine,” but the name does not seem to matter. It responds mostly to Link and it will be weeks before she elicits the same obedience and loyalty in the creature that it holds for its master.

Part of her almost misses—

She shakes her head to rid herself of the thought and resists the ease with which she can just slump forward and find herself in some delightful town square, watching children play or dogs chase their tales. That’s what she misses. The wide, wide world and how easily she could enter it. Her control over it.

She's come to rely so much on a practically blasphemous perversion of the sealing powers she needed all along, and now the memories of her abilities in captivity are… tinted in another color. She’s burst into silent, leaking tears several times now, but she's switched to familiar but very distant landscapes four times, and each time Link has fretted, and then signed for her to take it easy and be patient. As though she had any other choice.

He rides carefully beside her, like he always has, and consistently notices her shifts into gloomy unease. He fusses over her in small ways. No, she’s not cold. No, she doesn’t want his sandals. No, she tells him when he gestures at the side of the road; she’s not hungry. Although she’s glad to say that the mushroom stick isn’t the extent of his cooking ability, and he has retained his old skill with a cooking pot. He’d whipped up a surprisingly delicious curry the night before, and it was rather nice to eat something warm and delicious after so long… without.

But her pain is harder to pinpoint and more difficult to console. She feels all manner of guilt, blame, bitterness, and loneliness. Her pain seems…. Permanent and natural, deserved, and before she knows it Link has spurred his horse onward and redirected it to block her path.

He has a look on his face that makes her avoid arguing with him and she follows him as he leads her to a small clearing where she waits in silence as he prepares a fire and sets up a makeshift shelter with a horse blanket, a spear, and the packs he removes one by one from his horse.

They sit in silence, watching the fire, like they have for two nights now, and she’s happy that he chooses to sit beside her every time. She's glad that he draws a cloth close and wraps it around her shoulders firmly, that he’s decided to watch the sun set lower and lower from a place beside her. He keeps his bow drawn, the arrow carefully not notched, but ready throughout the inching hours. After a while he seems satisfied that no monsters will suddenly manifest and he pulls from a bag to his side an old, tattered book.

He gives it to her and painstakingly signs that it’s hers. That it was her father’s, and that he wants her to know that he had found it in the castle, and that she should have it. He barely pauses to stare in trepidation and awe at the ease with which his signs come anymore, they flow _almost_ fluently out of him if he lets them, but she notices that the more he thinks the slower they come.

She keeps her wonder at his mind’s ability to associate their conversations in the past with his knowledge of the motion-language and her physical presence beside him to herself and she accepts the book quietly.

It clearly once belonged to her father; it’s written in his hand. She flips through the beginning portions with some interest, noting his joy at her birth, his despair at her mother’s death mixed with his awe at her strength and tearless silence (so no one told him that she ended up at the top of perhaps five trees that summer, crying to the sky while her caretakers and tutors fretted at the bottom and begged her to come down. She did not blame them, but her fits always ceased when he spent the day with her, when the time and business of being king allowed for it).

“He was a good king. Mother always said he was the best of kings and the most uncertain of men, and I never once understood what she meant."

Link flips to a page, and taps a passage over her shoulder. Her father had written here of his chastising efforts against her research. She laughs for a moment and then the laughter is strangled with tears.

“I never did blame him, I always blamed myself,” she confesses, passing a hand over her eyes to hide the weakness. Link taps the page firmly again and she looks down to read through blurry vision that her father was also unsure, that he also blamed himself.

She shuts the book. It was always easier to think of him as unendingly sure, as definitively right. The king, her father, who was perfect and just and fair and who knew what needed to be done and what she was not doing right. Even when she was furious with him, when she wanted nothing but to run away and maybe even hurt him a little with her rebellion, even then... she trusted him, loved him, and knew he was not evil, that he did what he thought was right. To know that he had doubts…

“I can’t read this now. Thank you for giving it to me, Link, and I hope you know that I do not blame you for reading it. I did ache about this often, didn’t I?”

Link squeezes her shoulder and she takes a moment to be rather alarmed at the strength of it (he’s rather out of touch in regards to his own strength, it seems). He wraps the book up in a waterproof cloth and puts it back into the bags to fall to the sidelines in silence.

“I miss him terribly,” she says, determined not to cry again, but failing as a few tears blur the fire before her. “I missed mother too, but I was so young then. I didn’t understand. I only wanted to make him proud of me, so that he might stop crying for her. I _always_ wanted him to be proud of me. I only ever wanted him to understand—“

She brushes her hands across her eyes and pulls her knees to her chest, self-conscious of her bare feet and dirty toes, she lets her head drop onto her knees. Link puts his hand on her arm and signs onto her skin that he understands so that she would not have to look up and show him her tears. Or perhaps he does it because the darkness is pulling in closer and closer around their little fire.

“Really, Link. Thank you. For everything. I don’t know what I’d have become if not for you,” she confesses.

He chuckles in that dry way he always used to and signs “a scholar” into her skin, and then “or a politician.” The tearful laughter that pours out of her splits the dark and almost, _almost,_ carries the twisting knots her father’s memory left in her mind.

She does try to sleep on the cold earth that night, but it’s not discomfort that keeps her awake even as the moon climbs higher into the sky. Link refuses to lie down. She feels as if shutting her eyes will transport her to the last time she was able to sleep peacefully while he remained vigilant and it feels like longer than a century has passed since she was able to. It’s not very comfortable at all.

She stays awake till the sun rises again but pretends to be asleep while Link remains vigilant and ready. She feels exhausted and ashamed that Link has done this time and time again, without fail, in order to protect her. He isn’t the slightest bit different or weighed down in the morning, a soldier through and through. Since the age of six, she recalls with some discomfort, he has trained and prepared for this. And then he forgot it all until she made him remember it.

All for this… whatever it was that had grown between them and had always gone nowhere.

He hands her a small dagger before she mounts Sunshine. It’s rather heavy but well decorated. She has a suspicion that he had it made specially; for the blue, floral pattern carved and inlaid into the sheath is unlike anything she’s seen in any Hylian weaponry. It’s as if the details are made from the inside of seashells.

She tries to meet his eye in order to ask, but he’s determined to be preoccupied with packing up their camp. His ears are a little more red than normal, she realizes with a smile. 

The road, when they come upon it again, is mainly devoid of travelers. It stretches on between the mountains ahead and winds forward in a familiar way, but she cannot remember where this road leads. 

She rides beside him in companionable silence, but that ease is shattered when they spy the first monster either of them has seen since the castle. It’s a pearl-white creature aimlessly wandering the shrubbery alongside the road, its enormous club dragging forlornly behind him as he slouches and shuffles back and forth between a bloody stag and the line of trees behind him. The creature spies them immediately and Link has his bow out before she can gasp. He points it at the creature without hesitation, but then he seems to freeze, narrowing his eyes with his bow drawn. 

The creature turns its back on them and walks away, abandoning its pattern of forlorn pacing and disappearing into the trees.

She grips her dagger less tightly, but the sight of the monster’s bare, painted back retreating throws them into the most uneasy silence she’s felt in a long, long time. That monster was the first of a few, but each one they see afterwards behaves in much the same way.

It feeds her misgivings, and the road is suddenly haunted with uncertainty. Once, when the silence grows too pressing and her thoughts too crowded, she asks something that has weighed on her since she put all her power into the tower on the plateau: “Did you know your name?”

He startles a little at the sudden break in the silence and meets her eye with some confusion.

“When I called for you, the first time, did you know your name? Did you remember who you were?”

He shrugs slightly, then seems to give up halfway and lets his shoulders drop. He signs _I don’t know._

“What did you feel?”

He signs a symbol similar to the Hylian crest and she recognizes that it means something like _duty._

“Your father. Did you ever…” she begins to ask something, but she trails off as the implication of her question dawns on her.

He signs something she doesn’t catch, for he seems to have given up halfway through the motion.

There’s a long pause where she can’t bring herself to say anything or look away from the tight expression on his face, but then he signs _you’ll see_ and smiles weakly as if to reassure her.

She rides in silence again, praying that one day he might forgive her.

 

They make camp five times throughout the journey, but ride only three days before they see the lights of a village glimmering in the distance. The slow pace is for her benefit, though it seems he’s determined to make it look like he always travels so slowly. He seems enlivened by the sight of the lights all the same, and the steadily all-encompassing uneasiness that surrounded them both on the road lifts a little.

They ride past the clustered homes, which are silent and a little imposing in the darkness, and follow a trail of lanterns lit with a stunning blue flame to a house upon a hill. Exhausted, Zelda does not ask many questions about the village or the weapons glittering on the walls of the house. She realizes too late that she left Link to take care of the horses and the packs alone, and by the time she runs back outside to help him he’s almost done unloading them and setting out the feed. He waves her concerns aside and soothes both steeds before firmly guiding her back inside and up the stairs to a loft. He lights a single candle and gestures towards a large bed in the corner.

She stands in the small circle of flickering light his candle casts, ashamed and angry as he spreads out blankets on the floor and settles down, untying his sandals and folding his cloak as a pillow. Three days and he’s barely slept for more than a handful of hours, but he’s somehow managed to ply her with honey and tea and warm fires and now a house.

She concedes, shy and embarrassed, and takes her place on the bed. The threat of tears that night isn’t for grief or exhaustion, but for sheer frustration.

In the end, nothing has changed. She falls asleep with her throat sore. 

The morning doesn’t bring much light either, and she wakes to rain hitting the roof with a shocking violence. She realizes Link probably paced himself in order to make sure she’d reach the house without rushing the journey and exhausting herself and without getting caught in the storm outside.

She descends the stairs to see him already setting food out on the table, and the shame persists, perhaps even grows in strength.

“Thank you, Link,” she says, and he impatiently waves her gratefulness aside. He gestures at the wall where a battered, ancient, rusting bow emblazoned with her father’s personal crest is propped up in a wooden stand among other trophies. _My father’s_ he signs. _You asked. Remember?_

She stares at it in awe. It’s hideous, but imposing and heartbreaking too.

 _My sister’s too,_ he continues. _Her’s, then her son’s, then mine._

She stares at him in shock, struggling to ask what she wants to ask.

 _I’m a…_ he seems to struggle with the terms for a moment, but finally signs _I’m a grandpa uncle. Great-uncle. Her son had two children of his own. Adventurer like me. Died in an attack five years before I woke up._ Zelda takes a moment to absorb this.

“Do they…? Do they know?

_Yes. Impa used to babysit them. I try to visit and bring gifts when I can. I’m younger than they are; it’s funny._

Zelda watches him, unsure what expression is leaking onto her face. Link snorts and tells her that yes; Impa is still alive and well. She has a granddaughter named Paya and wears a (Link needs to repeat this twice for Zelda to get the full picture) very big and funny hat now. But more importantly, his great-nieces are wonderful women and very talented archers. Perhaps he and Zelda could pay them a visit, when the weather clears up and they had taken the time to rest, which she understands means that she is the one who needs resting.

 _They teach archery better than I can._ She’s not sure that’s true. He's the one who taught her, after all, years ago.

“And your sister?”

He’s silent for a long time. Then: _I miss her a lot. I didn’t remember her at first; I wished I didn’t for a while once I did. But now I’m happy I remember._

She fidgets with the bread in front of her. She knows he’s waiting for something; it feels like it did in the mornings of the past. When she’d sit with the map open before her and he’d wait for their next coordinates patiently.

“I want to see Impa.”

_I know._

“Let’s go see her,” she says, feeling the tears rising again. “Let’s see Impa and your family.” She brushes the tears away violently and bites her lip, willing away the weakness. He reaches out for her hand but seems to stop himself. He instead pushes the open jar of preserves closer to her.

_Let me get you your clothes. We’ll go to her soon._

Link goes out into the rain and leaves her with the weapons on the walls and the stray pots of flowers (wilting slightly) inside. There are still tears seeping from her eyes, but she’s not crying, and she inspects every weapon and every flowerpot carefully. After some time she realizes that each of them once belonged to the Champions and it’s like the room becomes overcrowded all at once.

Urbosa’s scimitar shines in the intermittent flashes of lightning illuminating the walls and the sight of it leaves her shaken and confused. She wants to take it and keep it close to her and at the same time she never wants to see it again.

Tearing herself away from its golden glow, she goes to a window and forces it open, letting the mist of rain hitting wood wet her face. She follows a flash of lightning with her eyes and leans onto the windowsill, waiting for the familiar crash of thunder.

Her eyes can’t maintain focus on the lifeless flashes of light so they drift naturally to the flowers on a nearby shelf, and the thunder comes and goes as she loses herself in the small, botanical machineries of a small potted rosebush outside the window. She whittles away time watching the small components of the leaves collapsing slowly, the small walls closing in on themselves as she looks on, then expanding minutely with the wash of the rain. She gathers the pots inside the house in a trance and places them on the windowsill, letting the water collect in the soil and planning another intervention about how water and daylight aren't enough for many flowers, despite what Link may think.

She loses track of the time, but when Link returns she realizes she must have spent hours watching the rain and the flowers. At least she’s still upright. She did not care to think of Link’s reaction if he had found her collapsed on the floor, and she felt guilty for lingering on it too long.

“They need at least half a day of direct sunlight, Link, this variety thrives on mountainsides.” She turns to him fully. “Are all of those for me?”

Link looks at her a little bit sarcastically, as if to say “yes, princess” but with bite.

She looks around her, at the almost imperceptibly repainted walls and the warm loft above and the jars of preserves and honey lined up on the table, at the basket on the table over-full with fruits and berries and nuts, at the plants in their pots and the carefully dried flowers hanging from the rafters, their scent wafting through the house like memories.

“Is all of this for me?”

Link smiles and holds out his burden for her to take.

“Link…”

He insists, shaking the packages a little and making the pool of rainwater dripping around him a little worse.

“When will you be free of me?” she wants to ask him. She takes the packages instead and thanks him for what feels like the thousandth time.

“I’ll get dressed. We’ll set out as soon as I’m ready,” she says in the best approximation of what used to be her regal voice. Link looks a little reluctant, perhaps because of the sudden reemergence of the princess voice, but he agrees and she returns to the loft to change.

The clothes are perfect. A little roomy, but perfect. He remembered her penchant for embroidery and long sleeves, and even commissioned the same pattern on the dagger for the details are unique, and they match the flowers on the dagger perfectly. She holds the dagger in question up against the cloth and compares them for a moment, touched at the amount of effort he's put into such small, unimportant details. She remembers the tea he'd brought, the golden steed he'd found for her, and fights tears as she returns to dressing herself. 

She comes downstairs to show him, and though he seems a little pinker around the edges than normal he says nothing about the flowers.

 _You like blue, right?_ _I can make them another color if you’d like?_

She shakes her head. Blue is perfect, she tells him. He beams.

_I thought you might. I have a gift for you._

She almost dreads what he might pull from his bags now, the guilt of her own uselessness discoloring the warmth of his smile.

He pulls out a sheikah slate, a slightly less battered one than the slate he keeps at his hip.

_Remember this? I found it in the forest. The Koroks kept it._

She reaches out for it and it activates immediately. She meets his expectant gaze and finds she does not know what to say.

_Travel will be easy this way. Trust me. I had the data on both synced._

“How?” she demands.

He rolls his eyes.

_Remember Robbie and Purah?_

Zelda gasps. Purah? _Robbie?_

Link mimes Robbie’s unforgettable and excitable little dance, and the strange BRRRRRRNGGG noise he makes when he’s happy, and laughs. _Yes, those two. They fixed it, and one can use it to travel._

"To travel? Between shrines? I believe that has something to do with those towers that erupted all over Hyrule when you awoke, then."

Zelda holds her hand out for his slate and realizes too late, after he immediately hands it over, that she did not say _please_ or even ask. Ashamed, she tries to focus on checking the data on both, measuring them against each other.

“I have a bow?” She looks at the information closely. “The bow of light? You’re giving it to _me?”_

Link makes that same face he made before, when she asked if he had done all this for her. _Of course._

Zelda shoves the slate into the holster at her side and stands.

“Where are we?”

He signs the symbol for a bay and a town and a lab. Hateno.

“I wish to speak to Purah myself. She's around here, right? Take me to her. Please.” She holds out his slate for him to take.

Link nods and gestures towards the door. _As you wish,_ he signs. Their fingers brush when he takes the slate from her hands.

 

The hike up the hill is wet and difficult, she slips more than once and she’s glad for the hood that hides her anger whenever Link is forced to stop and help her regain her footing. To see the giant spyglass peek over the hill is an enormous relief, and speeds up as the giant furnace of flames seems to beckon them closer.

She knocks on the door twice, and hears a familiar voice cooing something indiscernible.

The door creaks open, and the small child that looks up at her is familiar around the eyes and the glasses.

“Zelda?”

She’s silent, wondering who's granddaughter the child is.

“Zelda! It’s me! Don’t tell me you’re as bad as Link over there!”

“Purah?” she gasps. But it’s not possible.

“Oh, Zelda. Yes, it is I. Purah. Remember that rune I found? The one you said definitely wasn’t volatile or theoretically uncontrollable. And you said I should definitely not focus on more useful runes while the calamity gained power? Ahah.”

Zelda stares at what used to be her wonderful mentor and companion, at what appeared now to be a significantly bratty child.

“I told you the runes unmake people for results, I _told_ you that’s how it would work! I told you the exact opposite of what you said I said!”

“Oh good, you’re all in order!” She glares at Link, who had been looking very bored throughout the whole exchange. “At least someone’s all there!”

Link makes a very rude sign that she’s certain they never confirmed in their sign lexicon. Purah cackles and finally steps aside, letting them in.

“So sorry! My manners disappeared with my old womanly inhibitions, so I’m not a good hostess. Sit anywhere, I don’t care.”

Zelda takes a moment to glare at Link for being rude, but she obeys Purah without too much trepidation.

A strange man is hovering around a tea set and fussing with the kettle. Link breezes across to him and takes over, effortlessly preparing the tea alone. She looks away as he signs a little abruptly for mint, _why don’t you have mint?_ Of course the sign for mint is literally ‘ _mouth icy’_ because the authors of those old texts hadn’t traded with Gerudo very extensively yet and no one had revitalized the sign theories beyond army signals since. But Zelda had always loved mint with her tea, and now Link was going to make her tea with mint, and harass old men who did not have the mint necessary to do it.

The man frets even more in confusion, and Link groans and looks over at Zelda with an impatient expression, as if to say “Oh, what can you do? He’s incompetent.”

Zelda turns her attention to Purah, who is pulling out old notebooks from the shelves lining the walls. They all have familiar markings and patterns on their covers. She pushes them across the crowded table towards Zelda, sending knickknacks and pens and small tools clattering to the ground. Zelda winces.

“Your research, Your Highness.”

With renewed interest, Zelda reexamines the books, and then grabs them hungrily. They’re her old field-notes. Inside are her sketches, her observations, her outlines of each ancient rune and its corresponding sister in the old Sheikah compendiums she was drafting at the time. She flips through, carefully tilting the book to hide the occasional doodles in the margins of Link and his profile, his eyes, his hands.

“I’ve already seen it all, girl, you can’t hide much from me.”

Her face heats up and she snaps the volume shut quickly.

“So what’s the plan?”

Zelda carefully balances the notebooks on her lap and sighs. “I don’t know,” she says.

“There doesn’t have to be a plan yet,” Purah tells her quietly. “It’s up to you now, to decide who you are.”

Zelda suddenly feels a large headache coming and tries to fight it off by rubbing her eyes. She resists the urge to sink into the old apple trees throughout the village and watch them grow, miniscule hand spans at a time.

“It’s up to me to decide what Hyrule is, not who I am.”

“Oh, is that how it is?”

She snaps back to the lab and Purah’s large, unsettling eyes are suddenly inches from her own. She smells like ashes.

“All those years of tearing yourself apart about those powers, and now you just can’t get enough of them, huh? All those years running away from that castle and now you just can’t wait to fix it up again, make it big and shiny.”

Zelda ignores everything else, and focuses on what ails her. “Are these powers mine?”

“They sure look like they’re yours. You’re using them, after all.”

“I thought… for a while I thought I must have stolen power from Ganon. It took so long… I couldn’t get anything to work, nothing awoke inside of me, and then Link… when Link… It was so sudden, I thought—”

“Even if that were the case it’d also be your power. Finders keepers and all that.”

Zelda sits there, a little offended to have her agonies (a century of agonies) dismissed so quickly and thoughtlessly.

“Oh, is _that_ what you’re swelling your eyes up for?” Purah snorts, her voice still young but her words remarkably ancient. “You’re agonizing over whether or not you took something from that _thing?_ ”

“No, no. But that’s part of it.”

“The power is yours. How do you think you siphoned off energy from him? By wishing really hard? No. In fact, I have a theory.” She gestures for the notebooks in Zelda’s lap, and Zelda hesitantly hands them over. Purah sorts through the pile until she comes across one with a red patterned cover. She quickly flips through it, stopping a few times to scan a page and tut. Zelda looks on with some sickness inside her, growing stronger.

“Here,” she says, tapping at a passage in Zelda’s own hand. “You describe the concept of the power here. Give it a look”

Zelda does as she’s asked, fighting an ill feeling and the urge to let it show on her face. There, in her own hand, is written " _and the princess 10,000 years ago could seal the calamity. It’s an odd verb in the original language, it sounds more like ‘confirm’ in ours than ‘seal.’ I cannot figure it out. I suppose sealing Ganon is the ultimate goal, I can’t understand what ‘confirming’ Ganon means."_

“What do you mean by this?”

“The question is: what did _you_ mean by _that?_ It’s your translation. _”_

“I have all my memories,” Zelda reminds her.

“Yes, but sometimes your mind goes places your thoughts don’t. I can’t figure out what you meant, but I see that you almost thought something while writing that.”

Zelda looks at the passage again, runs her hand over the ink and displaces it the tiniest bit with the wetness on her hands. A shadow comes over the page and she’s suddenly aware of a sketch in the corner of Link as viewed from behind, ponytail and earring distinct. She snaps the book shut and stands quickly.

Link fumbles with the cup of tea he brought her but he doesn’t spill a drop. She takes the tea without meeting his eyes, hoping he didn’t see. He probably didn’t. She thanks him and he pats her arm gently. Purah watches with _wider_ eyes.

“Goodness. There’s so much work to do, Your Highness.”

“And my kingdom takes precedence, Purah,” she says with a small warning.

Purah purses her lips and raises her eyebrows, a remarkably old womanish quirk for a small child, and tends to her teacup.

Link stands between them, a little confused and carefully huffing and puffing on his tea.

“I assume you’re here to ask about the slate, however.”

“I am.”

“I assure you, all the information on it is accurate. Link himself randomly checked a few locations with it, it was synced perfectly.”

“I want more," Zelda says, taking the rest of her notebooks back from Purah.

Purah’s head snaps up from her steaming hot tea. The eeriness of the fog on her glasses and steam rising around her face could not be over-exaggerated.

“Oh, finally. Tell sweet, little Purah everything you learned, Your Highness.”

“Well first of all,” Zelda began, flipping through the pages in a blue-covered notebook that she had titled ‘refutations of classical archaeology’ in a very firm and confident hand. “Everything I wrote in here about the military usage of the runes was wrong. But I had the right idea.”

“How do you know?”

“The land has memories.”

“What did the trees and bugs and grass tell you?”

“Nothing. But I could sense the imprint of power in places where the ruins were very intact. The runes were _always_ specialized, very focused, points of power. They were never modified to work on more than one organic entity at once, so they could not have been safely applied to an army _ever._ Even at the height of the civilization.”

“Which means that--,”

“It means I told you so! About the age-rune!”

“No, besides that.” Purah pouts.

“It means the Calamity was only ever sealed by one person, or maybe two. The princess and her power, the Hero and the secret sword. Maybe that's why I failed the first time, or didn't succeed as well as the first princess did. I was right to be afraid. Everything else was a failsafe. The Guardians were always a defensive option, always ready, but they weren’t activated immediately. They might not have been activated if not –“

“If not for the failure of the princess to seal Ganon.”

“Ganon has thoughts, he has… memories and feelings. They’re twisted, but there’s someone inside him. He _learns_. He’s still learning now. We treated him like a natural disaster, like a fairytale. He used that against us.”

“Princess…”

Zelda rubs at her forehead, praying for the headache to leave. She sighs.

“I shouldn’t have looked for answers in the past. The prophecy was only a signpost, and we treated it like an answer.”

But something else bothered her. The guardians were not Divine Beasts, so what allowed _them_ to be corrupted? She had translated the symbolic word as “confirmation” first and then “sealing” second. She had brushed aside the first translation and operated solely on the second without hesitation and she ignored the inconsistencies whenever they arose. She had exhausted herself in more ways than one, traveling to shrines and springs and mountain peaks and hollows in the earth… always waiting for something to awaken inside of her, always wondering when she’d _become_ the princess of legend.

She’d acted like a politician, not a scholar. The glimmer of Urbosa’s scimitar catches her attention and she nearly turns her mind to it in full, nearly loses herself watching the familiar shape and shine. _I’m so sorry, my friends._

“Purah?”

“Yes, Your Highness?”

“I have a project for you.”

“Oh, _good.”_

 

They leave the lab when the rain stops and tell Purah they’ll be back very soon to collect the results of her new project. Link goes over the coordinates of the shrine they’ll be travelling to three times, visibly agitated at the thought of losing Zelda in the wilds to a miscommunication. She allows this, for the moment. She also firmly shoves him away after he tries to add three markers around the shrine in question, and he laughingly lets himself be shoved. The mood lifts, and she and Link travel to see Kakariko village again, after a long, long time away.

 

She wakes up in Link’s arms again, with a slightly familiar voice shouting orders and deafening her. She forces a hand up to his ear and with all her strength she yanks. The shouting stops abruptly.

He puts her down on the ground but stays beside her, holding her up. She’s regained her strength quite quickly this time, but remains silent, sorting through memories of an enormous dragon effortlessly, impossibly, flying over a ruined bridge and a stormy lake.

“Was that you shouting? It’s been a while.”

He shakes her shoulders a little, as if in impatience.

“I’m fine. I think teleporting shocked me a little, I couldn’t feel my body.”

She looks up at him to see what sort of face he’s making now, and is horrified to find him close to tears, furious, and heartbreakingly sad.

“Don’t look like that. Don’t make that face. I’m ok,” she reassures him softly, ignoring the many feet circling them in distress. He’ll take care of that later. She curses herself for thinking that. “You know I’m fine, Link. This doesn’t hurt me, it’s just a part of me now.”

He ducks his head, resting his forehead on her shoulder. She can’t tell if the wetness she feels is from tears or sweat. He nods against her skin and clears his throat.

“Alright?”

He nods again.

“Good. Let’s go see Impa.”

“No need, child, Impa’s here to see you. What a ruckus you’ve caused, girl.”

Zelda stares aghast at the old woman and her enormous hat.

“That hat _is_ enormous,” she gasps. And then claps her hand over her mouth. “My apologies.”

“No, it’s good to see you’re back to yourself again. The last time we had the pleasure of speaking that one,” Impa gestures at Link a little dismissively, “rather dominated the conversation.”

Zelda laughs nervously from her position on the ground where Link is very much not letting go of her yet. It’s familiar, given that the last time she and Impa spoke she was very much in Link’s current position. “It wasn’t much of a conversation.”

Impa scrutinizes them closely.

“No, no it was not. But the theatrics of today have made me recall that event in very clear detail. When you regain yourselves, come up to the house. We can speak in peace there.”

Link looks down at her and his eyes are a little red but he seems much more himself. She looks around her in curiosity and gasps.

“Really? You ran down that hill screaming and carrying me? What if you tripped or dropped me and I snapped my neck? What if you slipped and snapped _your_ neck?”

He visibly shudders at the onslaught, but he lets go of her to stand up and offer her a hand. _Stronger than you think_ , he signs a little smugly.

The villagers hover around them as they make their way to Impa’s compound. Link approaches it and the armed guards stationed at the foot of the grand stairs very confidently, like he’s been there countless times. There are other hints to his frequent visitations. There’s a man with a large easel readjusting his place by the water, a little bit put out by the ruckus around him. He smiles at Link as they pass and Link holds up a hand in bashful greeting.

Zelda’s a little captivated by this Link, who covers his mouth with one hand to hide a humiliated grin while waving at a man she’s never seen in her life. Who carried her into town while barking orders at people who definitely outranked him, now that there was no monarchy. She snorts. Link looks over at her curiously, still a little red. She waves off his curiosity with a blasé “Oh, it’s nothing, I was just rather charmed at the thought of you losing your cool in front of a whole village.”

She leaves him behind and continues up the stairs, satisfied with the glimpse of horrified shyness she caught in the corner of her eye as she passed.

The inside of the great house is close to what Zelda remembers it was about a century before. The wooden floors and the open spaces, the sliding doors, the cushions that would surround whichever matriarch occupied the main hall.

Paya brought tea in on a small tray and busied herself distributing it to her guests, sending darting, fleeting glances at Zelda all the while. She looked rather awestruck, but when Zelda tried to smile at her encouragingly, she flinched and hid her face. A little disappointed, Zelda takes a sip of her tea and finds that it was not sweet. She politely puts it down and slaps away Link’s hand when he surreptitiously reaches into his pack for what is certainly a packet of sugar.

“Impa, I’m so glad to see you well and healthy after all these years.”

“I wish I could say the same, Your Highness. That was quite the scare you caused.” She jerked her head at Link. “You made that one cry.”

Link makes a small noise of outrage into his cup of tea.

“Do you know what’s happening to me?” Zelda asks.

“Do _you?”_

A fair question.

“I believe my powers are out of control, and that the sealing abilities I should have awoken were mixed with Ganon’s power and became…. Volatile and uncontrollable.”

“I would disagree strongly, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

Zelda did not know what to say to that.

“I believe your powers are working better than perhaps anyone ever expected them to work, and because we have no idea how they _should_ work, we are quick to point at any changes in your mind and spirit as _irregular._ ”

“Even though the powers themselves are an irregularity.”

“Exactly.”

“So I shouldn’t worry?” Zelda notices Link glaring at her for that conclusion, and amends her statement. “I shouldn't worry… too much?” He doesn’t look reassured.

“No, I didn’t say that.” Impa says cryptically. “You should definitely be worried.”

“Oh, good. We’re doing something right, then,” Zelda says and jerks her head in Link’s direction. “He’s very worried.”

Link nods in stoic agreement.

“Why don’t you describe to me what the, as you call them, perversions are?” Impa offers.

“I sink into the land. I could do it with ease when I held back Ganon, I would take energy from him as he spread out. It was easy to take that and follow it, to go places and see things. I saw everything. I could influence things too. I brought back the Silent Princess, I spoke to Koroks.” Impa’s gaze sharpens at that, but Zelda presses on. “I watched over Link. When his mind started to… fall apart… I saved what I could. I buried his memories. I could do so many things. And now…”

“What’s this power like now?”

“I just get lost in the world. I leave my body and find myself elsewhere. Traveling between the shrines shocked me out, I think, but before that I could sink into a flower or a tree and remain upright and mostly aware.”

Link’s watching her with an expression she cannot read, so she looks away from him and stares into her teacup.

“You believe Ganon focused your power?”

“I believe something in Ganon focused it. I could sense the way his power changed me. Whatever makes him what he is now… It gave me something, too. I took from it… from him.”

“I may know something of this.”

“What do you know?”

“Something very ancient, mostly forgotten. There’s a legend about the springs that’s been reduced to something of a fairytale now,” Impa begins. “It’s hard to tell you where the truth lies in it, or if the truth is there at all.”

Zelda leans forward, eager to hear the story, even if it’s all a lie, for all lies begin at the truth.

“It’s been said that there was once a man, living and breathing, and that he was like a thread in a tapestry. Never separate from the Goddess, never apart from her power. Indeed, the story was more of a warning, to my memory. It tells of the goodness of power and might, but how strength and power can sour when they are used without wisdom and knowledge,” Impa explains.

“The man was a great king, and he wished only to make his kingdom greater, with the Goddess’s blessing, he wished to raise his kingdom to the height of the greatest legends. But his power brought on war, for kingdoms only grow through war. He created a great demise for his people, one we can only speculate at, if we take this as truth.”

“I don’t understand.”

“To be honest, neither do I. I haven’t heard that story since I was a little girl. Nobody tells it anymore. I must be forgetting half of it, I’m sure.”

Link taps her arm. She looks over at him, and he signs _I know someone who might remember._

Impa interrupts their silent conversation. “Princess, if I may ask, what will you do next?”

“I will do what my father did one hundred years ago: I will talk to many, many people, and I will ask them for their advice when it’s necessary.” Zelda took another sip of tea, wishing very much that Paya had sweetened it or that she hadn’t stopped Link from doing it for her. “I’ll begin now. Impa, do you believe it’s wise to announce my return? Do you think people will believe it?”

Impa laughs at that and her hat wobbles dangerously as her body shakes.

“My dear princess, the Calamity is gone. People have noticed the changes in the land. Many at Fort Hateno have seen you and your knight emerge from the chaos together. Entire villages have waited with bated breath as you passed through, waiting for an announcement. Every legend we told this past century is coming true. The question is: what will you do now that your people expect you to do something?”

Zelda puts her cup down gently and reaches across the tray for Impa’s hand.

“Thank you, old friend.”

“Go forth, princess. The world won’t mind if you preoccupy yourself with the flowers now and then. Control will come.”

Zelda rises and Link follows, but Impa holds out one hand.

“Before you go… Link, aren’t you forgetting something?”

Link beams and reaches into a pouch at his waist. He pulls out a perfectly whittled and delicately painted wooden horse.

“Oh, good. She’s been irritating me all month, asking when Uncle Link would be back with gifts.”

They bid Impa farewell, and Link happily leads Zelda to a very large tree at the edge of the village where a group of children are playing.

One of the children, a very loud girl with hair like the color of wet sand, seems to explode at the sight of him.

“LINK! UNCLE LINK! Guys, my uncle link is back!”

Zelda snorts at the moniker, and Link ignores it as he kneels for the child. It’s a touching scene. Link encompasses her in a bear hug and lifts her in the air, effortlessly seating her onto his shoulders and drawing a small but increasingly louder train of admirers behind him.

“Does mama know you're here? Or Auntie?”

Link shakes his head and spins around a little, eliciting shrieks of delight.

“Wanna go see ‘em?” the girl asks as Link slows down.

Link gently lowers the girl to the ground and cradles her face in his hand. And then he squeezes her cheeks together and slaps them gently.

“Next time?”

He kisses her forehead.

“Did you get me a present?”

He pulls out the horse and hands it over, smiling indulgently as she shrieks again.

Apparently appeased by the gift, the little girl turns to gloat to her friends. Link pulls her back and points at a house nearby.

“Yeah, I’ll tell them you came by. Come again soon, ok? Bring the pretty princess with you!”

Zelda smiles gently and waves and they watch the girl and her entourage stampede away.

“She’s beautiful.”

Link grins proudly and points to himself, wagging his eyebrows. Zelda shoves him.

 

 

Outside the village, Zelda finally asks Link whom he meant when he remarked on Impa’s story. Link pulls out his slate and shows her the map. He taps at what appears to be the Rito village.

“There? With the Rito?”

Link smiles.

“Alright, let’s go find that story,” she says without thinking.

Link nods and begins to prepare for the departure; he pulls out a dagger in advance and holds out his slate so they can compare coordinates for accuracy.

“Link?” Zelda begins. His hair is still ruffled from his great-niece’s antics. The shadow of a great grin is still on his face, he looks so happy and free, but it’s already fading.

He looks up at her expectantly. Waiting for instructions, and the remnants of laughter are gone.

She looks at the slate in her hands and hopes he forgives her.

“I’ll see you soon,” she says, and focuses every part of her mind onto her body, praying that this time it works.

 

 

It does. She finds herself before the Great Tree she had visited so many times before. She can’t see the Koroks, so she assumes they must be hiding. Unless…

Unless she can no longer see them. She calls out in a small, pathetic voice, and asks if anyone’s there. Even the tree is silent. She scavenges the area and finds a shield and a wooden sword seemingly abandoned by a tunnel. A bow, barely 25 arrows, a wooden sword, and one shield. What an adventurer she’d shaped out to be.

She thinks guiltily of Link and how he must feel now, but shoves those thoughts aside and thinks only of what she must do now. This was the only way to set him free.

The slate shows her every shrine Link activated and every tower he’d reclaimed. She selects one squarely within the Zora domain and braces herself.

She opens her eyes to the silvery luminescence of the Zora’s spires and towers and the stunned gazes of several Zora citizens. Ducking her head a little, she wades through the water surrounding her and approaches a stunned guard at the top of the steps to the courtyard beyond the shrine.

“Greetings. I am Princess Zelda. I wish to speak with King Dorephan.”

The guard stares at the slate in her hands and then at the silvery bow at her back. He salutes a little dazedly and turns on his heel to lead her on the long path to the throne room. They pass a statue of Mipha, a cold thing that barely captures what Zelda remembered of the girl’s unearthly beauty and gentle warmth. Zelda turns her attention away from it. The guilt is suddenly unbearable and her recurring headache threatens to force her to the ground.

The King of the Zora watches her with interest as she approaches the throne. The Prince looks a little more aghast, but he continues to glance towards the archway behind her… as though waiting for someone.

She clears her throat.

“King Dorephan. It is good to see you hale and strong, it is as though no time has passed at all. I’m sorry for not sending word of my visit. I’ve only recently… found my way back.”

“Princess… When we heard that Ganon fell…”

“I am here to request your assistance in a task set before me.”

“Princess Zelda, after what your Knight has done for us, we would be fools to withhold our help if we could give it.”

Clever wording.

“Thank you, King Dorephan.”

She waits a moment, determined to make her silence regal and studied.

“There are several items I wish to discuss with you. Firstly, and perhaps this is the easiest of my tasks, I wish to request a full-scale archaeological study of the ancient stone monuments throughout the domain.”

The Zora Prince gives an audible gasp of delight at this, and were it not for the circumstances, she would feel rather charmed by his honesty and vivaciousness.

“My knight is mentioned throughout, as you know, as are several prophecies shared throughout the kingdom. I would like permission to study them in full. I request that my experts have full access to the stones as well as access to studies that have been conducted by the Zora in the past.”

“Your Highness. If this will shed light on anything of use to you, we grant you our full cooperation. We humbly request, however, that you share your findings with us. I remember your reputation, Princess. It was not lightly that your father discouraged your research, I remember that it weighed heavily on him to discourage such talent.”

Zelda felt herself prickle a little at that, but she maintains composure and nods calmly.

“Your Majesty, your long memory is a gift. And I thank you for your cooperation.”

“You mentioned another request, Princess?”

“Yes. I am undertaking a quest to reunite Hyrule. I would like to revisit the treaties drawn thousands of years ago with the intent of reuniting Hyrule once again, for this I will need your input and your allegiance.”

The prince audibly gasps. The king, however, maintains his composure admirably.

“This is no small task, Your Highness. It has been a century, many may feel that it’s been a century too long.”

“I’m well aware, King Dorephan. I hope the hypothetical thoughts of some do not mean you find the idea doubtful?”

“Doubtful? No, to be sure, it is extraordinarily fortunate that you bring this before me. You know, of course, of what your knight has done for us?”

Zelda has no idea what Link has done for them, but she nods sagely and assumes it must have something to do with the familiar and giant elephant beast perched on the mountain. “Of course, he is, after all, the same hero who saved you once before.” That seems safe. And it doubles as a reminder.

“He has not only saved the kingdom, he has preserved our honor. For that, we are in his debt.”

And by extension, she thinks a little bitterly, they believe themselves to be indebted to her as well. She was calling in his favors, the liberties and honors he had earned, and no one even paused to question it.

“I am glad to have your counsel, King Dorephan,” she says carefully.

“Of course. We are glad that you came to us so quickly,” he says. “Your Highness, if you would honor us with your presence at the Late Meal tonight, we would be delighted.”

“I would love nothing more than to stay a long while, but unfortunately I must return to my knight,” she lied. She had no intention of facing Link’s agonized fury right now. “I must return at once, I’m afraid he will worry immensely if I delay--”

She realizes all at once that there is nothing stopping Link from combing the land for her and barging into the Zora’s tranquil domain with a flaming sword out. It wouldn’t be good for the future of the kingdom.

“For he does not precisely know the purpose of my departure yet,” she sort of confesses.

King Dorephan looks very intrigued by this development, but he wisely makes no obvious indication that he knows a runaway princess when he sees one. Mipha had her reputation as well, after all.

“Very well. You honor us with your visit. My son, Prince Sidon, will escort you to wherever you need to be next,” he directs this at the prince, who straightens immediately and leaps forward to grab both her hands. She’s nearly lifted off of her feet by his exuberance and barely swallows an undignified gasp at the sudden movements.

“Your Highness! It is an Honor to meet you, you’ve Blessed us with your visit,” he crows and Zelda cannot help but capitalize some of his words for him. He certainly sounds as though he’s capitalizing them. “Come with me, I will take you wherever you need to go.”

“Prince Sidon?”

“Indeed!”

“Link speaks very highly of you.”

The prince beams and nearly blinds her with his rather enormous, pearly teeth. She’s already craning her neck to meet his eyes, but the smile rather makes her want to put up a hand as a shield. He bows politely as she passes and falls into step beside her, noticeably slowing his pace to match hers.

“Link is a Fantastic hero, he surpasses any Hero I have ever heard of. And I have heard of _him_ very much! Of course it was not always positive, you know. But that’s the past. Water under the bridge and all that.”

Zelda has no idea what he’s talking about, but she can guess pretty accurately.

“Prince Sidon, may I be very frank with you?”

The prince’s smile slips from a crazed, wild thing to a more tame and familiar softness. He resembles his sister so much, she wonders if he hears that often.

“Of course, Princess Zelda. I hope you and I can be very good friends.”

She feels her cheeks warm at that. She’d almost forgotten what forthrightness and honesty was like.

“Well. Link doesn’t know where I am. Or why I left. I, ah... I may have left rather abruptly, actually.”

“Why in the seven lands would you do that?”

She supposes she owes him more than a stern “ _it’s not your concern_ ,” given his kindness and his friendship with Link.

“It’s not really something to be concerned about, but he may come looking for me. I’d rather you did not tell him my plans, or where I am going, so I won't be telling you.”

“You could have my word that—“

“I won’t insult your esteem for my knight and expect you to lie to him for me, Prince Sidon.”

“Yes, you’d be wise not to,” Sidon says.

Zelda fiddles with her slate a little bit before deciding on her next course of action. She selects a shrine.

“Wisdom always did serve me best. Goodbye, Prince Sidon. Calm him down for me, if you can.”

 

* * *

 

 

Link runs his hands through his hair and scratches at his scalp fiercely, willing his brain to simply arrive at a realization. Where would Zelda go? Where could she have ended up? Did she willingly leave him? Was he expected to interpret this as an order?

The Rito hadn’t seen her at all, though the only eyes present were the eyes of those fledglings singing on the landing. They swore they had not seen a pretty girl with blonde hair arrive at all, and had looked at him as though he were a little mad. He feels a little mad. He’s run his hands through his hair more times than he has probably realized, his hair-tie is gone, and he paces back and forth with his eyes fixed on the slate, waiting for something, some epiphany, to jolt him to action, ignoring any and all eyes on him.

His first stop after the Rito’s village was the Great Tree. After interrogating the Rito fledglings he had immediately sought out the forest and to his ire the Koroks were incomprehensible. They hid as he approached and refused to speak outside of giggles and maddening childish rhyme. He left them as soon as he determined Zelda was nowhere near. He stands now at the top of a tower he’s too distracted to name and racks his brain for answers.

Had she gone to the surrounding domains? She wasn’t equipped to handle intense heat, he realizes quickly, and so he disregards the Gorons. She might manage the Gerudo desert, he thinks, but he’d never be able to make it into the city without his… outfit. Which he had delegated to a chest in his house as soon as the Divine Beast was tamed. He could run back and get it, he thinks, but he supposed the guards would probably recognize him after all his hard work. They could bend the rules if he pushed hard enough, or they could at least tell him whether or not his princess had marched past them like she owned the city.

No, she’d have gone somewhere else first. She’d be thinking about her father now, after meeting Impa and Purah. She’d be sentimental, a little rash…

He braces himself and makes his choice.

As luck would have it, the guilty party in question stood not far away from the shrine’s little vestibule. He jumps off the platform and works very hard to make a giant splash in order to capture the prince of the Zora’s attention.

“Link! How wonderful it is to see—oh, you _do_ look angry. Before you ask, she _was_ here and I have no idea where she went after she left us. She’s met with my father the king already!”

Link grumbles and holds his hand out in a passive greeting and farewell.

“Good luck finding her, Hero!”

Link only resists leaving him with a rude gesture because he knows with absolute certainty that the honorable Prince Sidon is physically incapable of sarcasm and ill will.

 

 

The only thing stopping her from removing every layer of clothing on her body is the threat of indignity. However, leaking from every pore on her body and fanning herself madly wasn’t much better.

“ _You’re_ the princess? The princess who sealed the Calamity? Why, you’re just as small as I am!”

Zelda, incapable of coming up with a response, decides to stall by inhaling more of the icy tea the enormous warrior woman had placed in front of her. She sighs. Gerudo teacups are still so small and delicate, even after one hundred years, and she’s too self-conscious to ask for the whole jug to be placed in front of her.

“Yes, I am the Crown Princess of Hyrule, the Inheritor of the Kingdom, and a friend to… the Champion Urbosa.”

“Friend? You were her commander.”

Zelda meets the eyes of the small girl they told her was the Chief of the Gerudo now.

“I was both. But I suppose that I was not much of a commander, anyway.”

“That’s not how she told it,” the girl snorts.

“What do you mean?”

“Hasn’t your knight shown you our records? We’ve preserved her journals. She admired you very much. Urbosa called you an unexpected source of strength sometimes, but more often she referred to you as your mother’s daughter. One time as your father’s daughter. You really annoyed her that day.”

“She did?”

“Yes. I’d know. I’ve made it a point to inherit everything of her knowledge that I could find, you know,” the girl says a little dismissively. “That was your Champion, I suppose, who offered us his services. We’re indebted to him. He gave me the idea, too.”

“Idea?”

The Chief of the Gerudo smiles proudly and Zelda feels a rush of admiration for this very small, proud girl who sits in a seat twice her size.

“My idea!” she straightens up and her aura of disinterested ease fades away. “The inheritors of the Champions!”

Zelda falls silent.

“Excuse me?”

“Well, after your Champion’s Inheritor, your new Champion, came by, I got the idea… If he was doing so much work, and helping so many people, and all that… why shouldn’t I take advantage?”

“I—“

“Don’t I deserve the chance to serve my people as Champion?” the girl leaps up onto her seat, standing with her hands on her hips.

“Of course,” Zelda says, a little aghast.

“Well, I refuse to. I’ve chosen someone else to do it. Do you know why?”

A little confused, Zelda makes eye contact with a guard to gauge how this behavior ranks from a scale of normal to out of line, but the guard looks equally concerned.

“I would like to know why you’d want a Champion when the Calamity has been sealed and why you’d choose someone other than yourself to inherit, yes.”

“Oh, you’re just like everyone else,” the girl says, falling back into her sitting position and reassuming her eerily calm, grown-up persona. “You think I can’t see.”

“I’m sorry, I only meant that—“

“Forgive me, princess, but I know why you’re here. You’ve taken care of the Calamity and you have managed to amass something of an army, I assume. How else could you clear the roads of monsters so quickly after the Calamity’s fall? We’ve noticed our caravans passing through the mountains safely, easily, lately. Our travelers come back with tales of monsters _humiliated_ and subdued. You’re going to reunite Hyrule.”

Zelda watches her silently.

“Yes, you’re going to reunite Hyrule. I may be young, but that means I remember the stories best of all. The fairytales. The king of thieves who fought for an independent Gerudo kingdom, who refused to sign the treaties…”

Zelda holds her breath.

“He was a fool. A tyrant. And he made the wrong sacrifices for his goals. But he wasn’t wrong.”

“Do you have… a suggestion to make? Chief Riju?”

Riju smiles serenely.

“Yes. Yes, I do. Your Champions? They’re no longer yours. The Champions should belong to their people, and they will not be gathered together under a single banner except in times of great peril. I am my Champion’s commander.”

“And in times of peril?”

“We will ally ourselves with you for the sake of Hyrule, as we always have. The treaties will always stand.”

Zelda, recognizing the rather symbolic language and roundabout logic for what it is, takes a deep breath and makes her decision. She prays it’s the right one. This will effectively give the Gerudo more military independence outside of Hylian interests than they've had in roughly six hundred years. 

“Riju, Chief of the Gerudo, I formally hear and acknowledge your suggestion…”

Riju leans forward.

“I think it’s the perfect idea to put forth when I gather the leaders of Hyrule together.”

“Wonderful! I thought we might see eye to eye. Hyrule’s future does look brighter than ever, doesn’t it? Budding allyships and so forth. It’s a pity your little knight isn’t here; he was great fun. And I’d love to see that helm again. Would you like to stay the night, princess?”

The guard at Riju’s side smiles a little smugly and bows, her arm extended to draw attention to a very beautiful cushion by Riju’s seat.

Zelda, feeling exactly as though she is narrowly escaping with her life, politely declines.

 

 

She opens her eyes, sliding out of the intense focus she now constantly assumes will be necessary whenever she travels alone, to the front door of Purah’s labs.

She raps her knuckles on the door rapidly, and waits to hear the small taps of tiny feet running to the door. She steps back as they near, and Purah opens the door with an eager grin.

“Princess! Good to see you again so soon! Come in, come in. I’ve found some very fun things!”

Zelda lets herself in and freezes when she sees who beat her there.

“Yep. There he is. He’s so mad, princess. I’m just going to step outside. For the first time in a year, perhaps, and let you two… talk for a moment.”

The door slams behind her.

Link looks furious.

_Why would you do that?_

Zelda looks away immediately; her gaze falls to the floor in abject guilt.

“I didn’t intend to frighten you, I only wanted—“

“Look at me, Zelda.”

She looks at him quickly, an apology ready, but he immediately begins signing. She loses some of it because of how rapid it is and how blurry her vision has become.

 _I was so angry_ , he signs. _And scared. Worried._ She can’t see the rest.

“I thought this way you could be free. I don’t want you… attached to me forever. You’ve done so much already, it’s ok to just… You can go home to your family, to your house, you can rest now.”

“Zelda.”                     

She forces her gaze back up to him, swallowing tears.

 _I don’t want to be without you,_ he signs. _If I had a problem being your knight, you’d know it._

She hopes she’s stringing the signs together correctly, and the thought of _that_ sends her gaze back down to the floorboards.

“I don’t want you to keep sacrificing things for me, protecting me. I want you to…” she finds her voice strangled in her throat.

He comes closer when she cannot control a sob, she can feel his hesitance and concern. She covers her face with her hands and hides. “I don’t want you to _hate_ me.”

“I don’t.”

She tries to tear her hands away from her face, she’s crying in earnest now, but she covers her mouth and looks at his hands bravely, hoping he isn’t watching her face too closely.

“I’m sorry. You don’t have to speak. I don’t— I don’t want to be a burden.”

_Not a burden._

“I want you to be happy.”

_I’m happy._

She tries to look away from his hands. They’re very close now. She looks up at him, slowly, and realizes that now he’s smiling a little. His anger seems to have faded. He looks like he did on that grassy field when she was still in that horrible, filthy dress. Kind and a little exasperated with her behavior. She feels herself calm a little.

 _I’m happy when I’m with you,_ he signs. _Even without memories, I’d have found you._

“That’s because you’re a hero,” she sniffles. “Because you’re so stupid and honorable.”

“Because I love you,” he says easily, like it’s the easiest thing in the world to say. He holds his hands up again and signs _I’m not that heroic._

“You are,” she sobs. “You’re my hero.”

_Then you’re stuck with me. Not the other way around. Stop sending me away._

She laughs, tearfully, and lets the gap between them close. He puts his arms around her and hugs her close and she buries her face in his shoulder and sighs, hiccupping a little.

“I’m sorry, Link. I should have spoken to you. I wasn’t thinking.”

He carefully signs something into her back but she can’t make it out.

“Didn’t catch that, sorry. I don’t want to let go yet.”

He seems to understand the sentiment, and his signs slip into a more comfortable stillness.

“Did you guys forget this is my _house_? Break it up!”

Zelda jumps in fright and instinctively pushes Link aside. He does look very irritated at the interruption, she notes a little happily. Purah rolls her eyes.

“I said I’d give you guys a moment, not _hours_.”

Link begins signing something at her, but Zelda’s wiping tears from her eyes and cannot see what he’s saying.

“Watch your language, Mr. Hero. I will forbid you from entering this lab if you don’t behave yourself.”

Link shakes his head at her and turns to Zelda.

_Are we alright?_

“We are. But please, don’t just do as I say. I’m not here to give _you_ orders.”

_You’ll regret that. Alright. You can forget what I told you, but know that I meant it._

She doesn’t want to forget. She signs the gesture for _wait_ and hopes he understands. Judging by his delighted smile, he does.

“Well. Princess, you’ve left me with quite the task. I hope you’re ready to supply all the information I’ll need to complete it.”

“That’s taken care of. You’re travelling to the Zora domain as soon as you’re able. I’ve gotten permission to conduct a study.”

“But—“

“The fate of the land quite literally rests on the definitions of some 10,000 year old verbs, Purah. You’ll either go yourself or send a delegate. You’ll understand why I’d prefer you to go yourself.”

“Your Majesty! Of course I’ll go,” Purah concedes.

 _You’ve been busy,_ Link signs.

“Compiling a dictionary of ancient languages is a daunting task. Which reminds me… The Chieftain of the Gerudo will be trying to seize power.”

_What?_

“In a much less violent way than you’re thinking of, it’s going to be fine. No war necessary. She’s young and she’s learning, we might as well teach her.”

_You’re going to train a girl in political maneuvering while rebuilding a kingdom?_

“It’ll be more like cleaning up the kingdom. Most of the infrastructure has been maintained, and our allies and subjects have suffered no great loss of life. And Chief Riju showed great promise. She terrified _me._ ”

Link looks begrudgingly impressed.

“You guys are boring me. I’ll be upstairs. Just lock the door behind you when you leave, alright?”

_What about the castle?_

Zelda meets his eyes.

“I’ll need to go. I am the Princess, and, _don’t get mad,_ but you don’t _need_ to come with me.”

He snorts. _I’ll come with you._

“What about everything here?”

 _Still ours, I paid for it._ He glares at her a little _It’s ours,_ he signs, and emphasizes _ours_ with a flourish.

“The cottage can be our getaway,” she says a little bravely. “We can escape there.”

_You always did like your escapes._

She bats his arm, which he continues to put around her shoulders. But then she remembers the way the walls appeared recently repainted, but only slightly so. She spares a piece of herself to revisit the house at the bottom of the hill, and notices the ways the furniture match the ancient wooden loft above, the way the stands seamlessly seem to belong on the walls.

“Link?” she asks.

She sees him sign “ _where did you go?”_ from far away.

“Who made the cottage… inhabitable?”

_I can take you to him._

“Yes, please do. I have another idea.”

 

The man named Bolson is striking, to say the least.

“Do you know who I am?”

“I’ve guessed, actually. No one around here _acts_ like that one,” he jerks his head in Link’s direction. “Or disappears as often.”

“I am Princess Zelda.”

“Oh my,” he coos. “You really are, aren’t you? The fairytale come to life.”

“Yes,” she says. “I hear you’re rather at the center of a large and wide net of—“

“Exquisitely talented construction workers? Yes, and _yes_ my men and I will make our way over to Hyrule Castle immediately.”

“You… How did you know?”

“Oh, just a guess. Shall I inform the others?”

“If you did, how long would it take to complete the major renovations with those numbers?”

“A month. No more than a month.”

She stares into his well-kohled eyes and realizes he is being utterly serious.

“Very well… You’re hired.”

“You have money?”

Link looks over at Zelda with no small interest.

“Ganon was a non-entity hell-bent on destruction and death, not overhauling the Kingdom’s finances. The safes are in pristine condition compared to the rest of the castle.”

“Oh, swimming in riches, are you? That’s a good incentive. I’ll spread the word.”

“Simply promise rewards.”

“Fine! But I _do_ expect riches.”

Zelda watches the man strut off, he seemed a little too excited at the prospect of riches and castles, but she trusts Link’s judgment.

There are other errands to attend to, namely convincing Purah to relay the news that along with Ganon’s defeat the Princess Zelda had returned, and would be making her way to the castle very soon.

They also stop by the tailor, where Zelda presents her ruined dress and requests it be recreated for no small reward. The seamstress falls over herself from her place in the corner of the room and practically kicks them out of the store, bowing and falling over herself, extremely excited to get to work.

 

They take a few chairs outside that night and sit in the dark watching the sunset. It’s peaceful, beautiful, and Link gets a fire going so that he can roast nuts and crack them, eating one himself for every five he passes to Zelda.

Zelda, for her part, rests her legs on his lap when he settles down and empties his bags of all hard-shelled, roasting nuts. She sighs.

“I want it to be like this forever.”

_You’d get bored of me fast. I can do this for hours._

“So can I.”

He smiles at her.

“What you said before… Did you mean it?”

_I did._

“You know, I thought you were very dreamy, before everything.”

_Don’t lie. You hated me at first. Sent me away over and over again._

“After that. You were pretty dashing the less I hated you. I changed my mind quickly.”

_Is that why you gave me treats?_

“I wanted you to open up to me. It’s not my fault you’re easily persuaded.”

He pinches her leg and rolls his eyes.

“I almost told the Great Tree to send you a message, you know?” She plays with the edge of her blouse, suddenly a little nervous. “He said he wouldn’t. He told me to- He told me to tell you myself.”

“I saw.”

Her head shoots up.

“You did _not_. I didn’t plant a memory like that, did I?”

 _You did,_ he signs now that he has her attention. _I’d like to hear it._

She blushes.

_Now I want to hear it more._

“One day.”

He shrugs. They sit in silence for a long time, watching the stars and cracking nuts together.

“I want to spend my life with you,” she whispers, when the thought can't sit quietly inside her anymore.

_I’m glad we're on the same page._

“But I don’t want to trap you. I’m serious. You’ve done your part and you’ve saved Hyrule. You’ve saved _me_. Isn’t there something else you’d rather be doing?”

_I won’t—_

She interrupts him.

“I won’t ask you to leave. And I won’t leave. I’m just saying… you can take the time to be Link now. You don’t need to oversee the castle renovations.” She rolls her eyes. “Or _meetings_ with the allied domains. You can be with your family.”

He watches her in silence for so long that she almost looks away and apologizes for offending him.

_If you’re there, I want to be there. I am your friend, right?_

“Of _course_ you are.”

_We’re partners?_

“Yes.”

_Then I want to protect you. I want to help you._

“When you say things like that you make me sound silly. And unreasonable.”

_You are silly. Silly to think I’d hate you._

She kicks at his chest and they fall into a more easy silence.

“Link?” He looks over at her a little lazily, that smile still on his face. “Let’s take our time going back to the castle.”

He gestures vaguely at their position.

“Yes, exactly. There’s no rush. Make me tea every morning and I’ll make sure your gardens and flowers grow very strong. No one in all of Hyrule can make a good cup of tea but you, it seems.”

_You’ve tried all the tea?_

“Almost. The Zora didn’t offer me any. Haven’t tried the Goron—what?”

_Not tea, something else. Heavier. Weird._

“I’ll have to try it. I suppose we had better meet with them soon, yes? And the Rito.”

_We’ll take our time._

They fall asleep outside. Link spreads out by the fire and Zelda finds herself lying on the grass beside him.

“You’d better not roll over and burn to death,” she remembers telling him, and then she must have fallen asleep.

Link, for his part, wakes up to a mouthful of hair. Not his own. He cranes and lifts his neck to see Zelda utilizing his chest as a pillow, and the contentment that realization fuels is incomprehensibly strong. He pokes at her cheeks incessantly, however, for the ground is uncomfortable and sleeping on the grass has made his calves itch. His neck also hurts, but Zelda looks so peaceful. And funny when her nose twitches against his assault.

“Not yet…”

He pokes her some more.

“Mrghmsfillg” she says, or something to that effect.

“Hey, Princess.”

Her head snaps up and her eyes are blearily searching for his instantly. He lifts one hand (the hand she hasn’t commandeered as her own) and signs _good morning, lazy._ Her gaze follows it as he lowers it back down and then she follows it, hitting his chest again with a thud.

“You woke up—“ she yawns. “Urgh. One minute before I did at the most.”

He feels her falling back into sleep and lets his head drop back to the earth. Five more minutes.

 

 

They decide to take the long way to the castle. They’ve put off meeting the Gorons and the Rito, but now that they are together those trips are not nearly so daunting. They return to Hateno laden with gifts, spices, and an extraordinary amount of feathered hairpieces, and then they spend about a day sleeping and lazing about.

This was the long way, after all.

The next morning they spend an inordinate amount of time getting breakfast, and then packing, and then they choose to forgo the slates and take the horses. They pick up Zelda’s dress from the overjoyed seamstress, and they wave goodbye to the awe-struck villagers as they pretend from their usual haunts that they are not staring.

They leave the village to deafening cheers and many children running alarming close to the horses.

 _You’re popular_ , he signs to her.

“Yes, well. When they realize this means taxes again, they may be less excited,” Zelda says, leaning over to shoo a particularly insistent bespectacled boy away from the giant horse. Thankfully, he falls behind. She breathes a sigh of relief.

_They do collect taxes. Goes to the village rather than the Castle now. Efficient._

Zelda is surprised to hear it, but a little impressed. The world _had_ changed so much over one hundred years, but she’s heartrendingly proud of her people.

From what she’s seen, they don’t actually have great need of a central kingdom anymore. The issues of governance and law and order have been delegated from town-to-town, village-to-village, and each town has come to rely more on local custom and the words of elders than strict legal code. This might suit her well, given her inexperience and the weight of an entire kingdom’s reunification on her shoulders.

She could officially delegate most governance to each village and buy herself time. It might not have been the way of her ancestors before Ganon, but if she had learned one thing in her captivity it was that the world made its way with you. There was no need to fight fate all the time. Sometimes all she needed to do was know where to push and where to pull to follow the natural movement of things and control them.

She pushes Link to tell her more of what he’s learned on his adventures and learns that Link, in all his travels, encountered only one case of notable theft.

The thief was punished with banishment and a hefty fine, for he had stolen and slaughtered ten animals from a rival farmer’s livestock and sought to frame the monsters camped nearby for the crime.

This in particular piques Zelda’s interest. The idea of the monsters being found “innocent” in any sense feels alien, unusual, and yet her discomfort is (she knows this) wholly unjust. She wonders what might become of the monsters now that Ganon was gone. They could, supposedly, be wiped out. There were no more Blood Moons to revive their corpses and there was no more of Ganon’s power to inch its way towards their fallen forms.

It feels wrong. She doesn’t want to mention the thought to Link, but she keeps it in mind.

The monsters could be one reason to reinstate central leadership. But whether it was to eradicate or protect them, she was not sure, but one thing was certain: they were no longer a threat.

They pass by many on their way through the hills and towards the grasslands of Central Hyrule. Each monster either ignores them or watches them almost forlornly from a distance, never coming closer. Those on horseback never move. Their horses fidget and wander, but they are not guided.

Link has his bow drawn and trained on a red bokoblin on a black steed but it never turns to look at them, even as they pass by close enough to see its nostrils tremble with breath. It seems to be trained on the castle, watching the spires from afar, never moving. Link keeps his bow drawn but they pass it and it never shifts in their direction once. She tries, for the first time in a hundred years, to see what _made_ the being. Why it popped out of the earth when darkness neared and why it stayed when darkness left, aimless and empty, a shell.

She peers into it, gripping her horse’s golden mane tightly just in case, and falls into the thing’s presence. It’s utterly empty. There’s nothing there, nothing but cobwebs of rifts and knowledge abandoned.

She shudders.

“I won’t have them all killed.”

_Good. They’re part of Hyrule too, whether we like it or not. Leave them be._

“What if they go mad again?”

 _They’re mad now,_ Link signs. _They’ve lost their minds. We’ll wait to see if they find them again._

“How do you know they can?”

 _Ganon changed, remember? They’re not…_ he’s struggling with signs less and less lately, but he struggles now. _They’re not without meaning_ , he settles for the sign that means ‘purpose.’

She watches the beast as they ride away from it, further and further away, and then it spurs its horse onwards, turning it away from them. It rides back into the forest.

“What will become of them, I wonder?” she says, watching it retreat into the trees.

_We shall wait and see._

 

Hyrule castle, when they reach it, is surrounded by tents and by people setting up even more tents. There are flags raised high for miles around the grounds, and men and women create small, pseudo stables for their horses and livestock in small settlements everywhere.

She passes by a man putting four soldiers through strict drills, and as she and Link pass by he turns and salutes to them. His men do the same, and Link raises a hand in acknowledgment before turning to her with a look of intense horror.

 _No one’s ever done that_ , he signs with the hand they cannot see.

She smiles regally and waves too, rapidly signing for him to pull himself together with the other hand.

It’s not just that man and his trainees, there are Gerudo warriors setting up camp with their wares displayed as Hylians and Gorons alike stop to barter. A group of merchants has set up an archery range away from the crowds and there’s even a horse race taking place a little further ahead, to the edge of a tent that looks to be overflowing with men carrying cheap shields.

 _Shield surfing,_ Link signs. _I didn’t think it would catch on._

Zelda watches with some horror as a youth barrels down a hill while balanced on a perfectly functional shield.

_A waste. And risky. But fun._

Zelda gives him a look that she hopes conveys _keep the fun to a minimum if it’s that dangerous_ and refocuses her attention on the crowds gathering to watch their progress towards the castle.

With the rubble and chaos mostly coming from other directions, and the miasma of hate and antagonism gone, the castle does not look half so ruined and demolished as she remembers. She foresees great difficulty re-entering the premises, she can already feel the weight of memory trying to pick off bits and pieces of her mind to keep but she straightens her back bravely and rides on.

They enter the castle through the main gates, and though the main doors are badly damaged, the effect is palpable on the crowds behind them. A hush falls over the people, and Zelda turns her steed around to face them. She knows they will not be able to hear her, she’s never been good at projecting her voice or roaring like her father. But she holds her hand out and raises it to the skies and Link unsheathes his sword and does the same. There’s an odd noise behind her, and she assumes it _must_ be the sword, now raised skyward, reacting to something. The effect is as she desired, and the roars of the people follow them as they continue on their path into the palace.

Time, or perhaps malignant evil, has ruined the ceiling above the castle throne room. Rays of light filter through the rotting wood in patches and illuminate the crumbling platform that carries the throne of Hyrule’s ruler. Zelda approaches it silently.

“It’s just us now,” she says.

 _I could coronate you,_ he signs. _I don’t have any power, but I could pretend._

“By the power vested in me,” she says mockingly, deepening her voice, “by the wilds and that dragon I fired arrows at for an hour…” She giggles. “Like that?”

He rolls his eyes at her. _More dignified._

She puffs her chest out and stands tall, throwing a fist before her and striking a pose. She loves to hear him laugh, and she’s rewarded with a snicker.

She turns back to the throne and runs her hands over the eroded stone. The mood is hard to lift when the surroundings are so grim, so old, so saturated with her grief.

“What pushed you forward, Link?” she asks. “Before you remembered anything. What pushed you to act? Don’t say honor, or that it was the right thing to do.” She turns to see his answer. He looks reluctant and a little nervous.

_The truth? Your father._

The throne room has never felt so cold.

 _I’m sorry. He…_ Link struggles with the signs. _He was a spirit._

“That’s not possible…”

_The Champions… Mipha, Urbosa, all of them. They stayed too. Didn’t pass._

She turns away abruptly to hide how terribly this knowledge hurt her.

“I see. Well. Well, I didn’t see, actually. How did I miss that?” she pushes at her temples, willing the headaches away. It made sense, in a manner of speaking. She only ever attached herself to the land. The Koroks, extensions of the Great Tree, toed the line between natural and bizarrely unnatural. Whatever did not exist anymore, whatever could not exist anymore; it stood to reason that she could not access its existence.

And then Link is there, a warm hand on her shoulder and a solid, stubborn, insufferable kindness at her side.

“I’m sorry,” she wipes away the tears before they fall. “We don’t have to talk about this. I don’t need to know.”

A snort. She turns to him indignantly at the sound but he just smiles and signs _you don’t know how not to know. He asked me to take care of you._ He holds up a hand to interrupt her ensuing ire. _I was not one for orders, then. I had no memories of being a guard, I was just me. I looked here._ He waves his hands at the ruins around them, not so ruined after all. _I looked at this castle and knew that you were here fighting._ _For a hundred years_. _And he loved you. So much. It was clear._ He takes a deep breath.

“Of course I wanted to save you.”

She finds herself crying again, trying hard not to look at him and give herself away. But he takes her chin in hand and pushes it back up anyway, and wipes the tears away with the sleeve of his tunic. With his other hand he signs _Don’t forget._ He drops the hand on her face to continue, _I saved you and the world. Remember we’re talking about the world. Selfish princess._

“Stupid knight,” she sobs, dropping her head onto his shoulder. He takes the cue and holds her close. They stay like that for a while as she calms down.

He pats her back gently, and then increasingly more rapidly.

“What?” she asks, looking up, and a flash of gold and blue catches her eye.

Oh. A Rito. The sight of him is very distracting; she remembers the bottoms of the oceans she’d frequented in the last few months of Ganon’s existence. It’s unsettling.

“I thought I’d find you here, in the lap of history, so to speak,” the Rito says. “Link, my friend, I got here as fast as I could!”

She turns to Link in surprise.

 _I mentioned him. And then you left me! Remember?_ He looks at her a little accusingly, but there’s a bright light in his eye that tells her he’s joking.

“Ah. Yes. I wanted to hear from you… stories. History.”

“That is my specialty, princess. I am Kass, and I’ve spent years traveling the world to collect songs and tales. What would you like to hear? It’s a small repayment for the opportunity you’ve offered me.”

Zelda pinches Link’s side. He pinches her back hastily.

“Yes. Yes, our offer. Would you like to go over the details again?”

“I—“

Link pinches her again.

“Nevermind, we’ll take care of that later. Please, let me tell you about the story I’m hunting for, I think you’ll find it very interesting.”

“Please. But would you prefer to speak in your tent?”

“My tent?”

“My apologies, I was told the tent set up outside was the Princess’s tent.”

Zelda looks at Link in confusion, who shrugs and signs that he’s just as lost.

“Well, let’s go to inspect this tent then,” she says.

They leave the throne room and exit the main castle, and in the desiccated courtyard is a gloriously multi-colored, massive tent.

“I guess this solves the question of where to have the meetings,” she remarks to Link. “And speaking of solutions, what on earth did you offer that bard?”

_An audience, mostly. Meaning the Queen._

“The Queen? Who on earth is the—“

Link looks at her with an eyebrow slowly approaching his hairline.

“You got me a court bard before you got me an army?” she asks.

_Yes. It suits you._

“I will be queen,” she remarks, a little bit thrown by the thought

“Indeed, you will be. And we are all here to pledge our allegiance to Hyrule, to renew our bonds of brotherhood, of honor, and of—I’m sorry, do you mind?” Prince Sidon seems particularly irritated by someone still in the tent

“No! Not at all. I agree completely,” a Gerudo woman in an astonishing gold outfit says, stepping out regally.

“Not you, Sheva! _Him_.”

Link groans as the Rito in question scoffs and follows Yunobo to stand squarely in front of Sidon to look unimpressed and arrogant in full view. He marches forward and gestures at both Teba and Sidon to come closer, and they do, and then he signs something to them, or he whispers something, Zelda cannot tell from where she stands. They immediately straighten their backs and clear their throats and Link returns to her side, satisfied.

“Very well. I assume you’re all here as representatives for your people?”

“As  _Champions_ ,” Sheva corrects.

“Yes,” Zelda concedes. “Champions, have you been granted the authority to witness and verify your people’s allegiances?”

Sheva laughs. “I definitely have been.”

The rest nod in confirmation and Zelda looks at Link expectantly.

_What?_

“You’re _my_ Champion.”

_Good. You’re not being silly anymore._

“All those gathered, do you take me as your Crown Princess?”

There’s a chorus of “ayes” and a very spirited clap from Link. She meets his eye.

“And do you recognize my authority as Crown Princess?”

Again, a chorus and a vicious clapping.

“Then, as I am the selfsame Princess of Hyrule, this is the Champion of Hyrule, Link, my own Champion," she pauses to appreciate the looks of awe and disbelief on their faces as they realize the legends and stories were true. Sidon only looks a little smug. "I look forward to preserving Hyrule for the centuries to come. With your guidance, your support, and your strength by my side, I assume my role as your Queen.”

“What? That’s it?”

“By the power vested in me by the Goddess Hylia, by my own awakened power, and by the emergence of the Chosen Hero in the time of our direst need, I dare say that I can coronate myself.”

Link shrugs when they look at him. He meets Zelda’s eye with his intensely comforting and secretly mirthful stoicism and falls to one knee, never once looking away. There’s a moment of silence and tension and then the Champions all follow suit.

He watches her and smiles, waiting for her next move.

Zelda watches him too until the landscape becomes endless sky and she realizes that she must focus again, and she drops back down.

She tenses her shoulders slightly to rid herself of the distant sounds of great birds crying out above the clouds and bids them all to rise.

Kass watches her, transfixed, and then he shakes his head in awe. “I have quite the important task ahead of me, don’t I?”

“Link chose you for a reason, I am certain you’re the best suited for the job.”

“It’ll be an honor to follow in my teacher’s footsteps. He also travelled the world and taught people the songs of the past, you know.”

“He’d be very proud of you, Kass. Let’s step into the tent, and I’ll ask you my questions.”

 

 

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that story… but I’ve heard of something almost similar,” Kass says. “It’s a tale of the Goddesses, of their alliance. The tale goes something like… One moment.”

He picks at his instrument and begins to sing, and it’s so beautiful that Zelda finds herself very close to a mountain in the Hebra range, snowcapped and isolated, and beautiful.

“ _A kingdom divided by three, their fourth a mystery. The relic for hope alone and an antidote to misery. But doom will follow you, and when you hear this song, pray for the one who is gone, and don’t forget me.”_

Zelda can’t make sense of it, and with a quick glance at Link she realizes that he is just as lost.

“Yes, it’s very different from the riddles I shared with you, Hero,” Kass remarks. “But it reminds me very much of your friend’s fairytale. It’s a story about kingdoms and the past repeating itself, but it feels very different too.”

Zelda ponders on the last line for a moment.

“It feels intimate. Personal.”

“The meaning _may_ have been eroded or borrowed by other stories through time, but I don’t believe that’s necessarily true,” Kass says. “There are times and there are people who use voice and memory like gold, yes, but even if they don’t, the past is not as malleable as people pretend. People remember and they don’t forget easily. We discredit ourselves often, but never more than when we speak of the past.”

Zelda ponders this, and then inclines her head slightly.

“Thank you for your help, Kass. I’ll ponder this some more. I trust you’ve come with a group?”

“Yes, my queen. I have come with a group of our best warriors. I know there’s no need now, but we wished to offer your castle protection for the duration of the project.”

“We thank you, Kass, and you may pass that on to your Chief.”

“I bid you a good night then, Your Majesty.”

He leaves the tent, and Zelda and Link sit in silence and filter his words through their thoughts and Impa’s story.

“All the signs point to my theory being correct. Ganon wasn’t always what he is now.”

Link watches her somberly for a moment before signing _I know._

“We can’t make these mistakes again. More than the Kingdom, it matters that we preserve everything you did and saw and learned, Link. Everything I saw too. It’s… it’s likely that you’ll return, but that I never will.”

_Even if I do return, I never remember. The Hero is a soul, remember? Not a person._

“The Hero is always named Link, or he's been named Link several times, and he’s always… at the command of the Princess. That's all just a blueprint, it looks like.”

_And you?_

“I don’t know what I am. I don’t know what my ancestors, the past Princesses Zelda, were. I don’t even know if I matter that much. But I must do my duty. Link, that means I must preserve the future of Hyrule.”

_You’re doing that._

“More than a castle, more than… treaties and remnants of war. The task I began when the relics were discovered, _that_ is the true heart of the kingdom. I’ve been prepared for this all my life, but I never saw it until now. Nothing… nothing I’ve done has ever been my own, Link. Except you. No, not even you.”

_No. I’m yours._

She laughs.

“Relics, ancient monsters, and a long, long line of grim, lonely women. That’s all we have to show for the great land of Hyrule.”

_You discredit the past. Remember what Kass told us._

“You’re right. A kingdom of relics. I’ve inherited a kingdom of deaths no one remembers and ruins no one wants to get rid of. I can’t imagine getting rid of them; it feels like it’d be murder. And I’ll never know the truth of any of it, so what’s the point?”

He hums the tune to the last lines of Kass’s song, and Zelda sings them aloud, changing the words to suit her.

_“And when you hear this song, pray for the ones who are gone and don’t remember me.”_

And don’t forget me.

She lies back on the floor of the tent, lost in the alien courtyard of her childhood and the uninhabitable ruins of her home, and for the first time in a long time she feels no urge to seize a passing bird or dance on a traveling wind. The world is limitless at her fingertips and she wants none of it. She just wants to know.

She shuts her eyes and pictures the old beings she’d watch circle the sky every night, radiating heat and darkness and light, the three dragons. The three springs. The fourth… _don’t forget me._

“It’s us. The fourth is me, or it’s Hylia, or maybe it’s the part of me that she blesses, or it's you. It doesn't matter. The song is about me.”

Link looks at her doubtfully.

“I don’t know how I know it, I just know it’s for us.”

Link only looks increasingly more confused, and Zelda cannot communicate the deep feeling of certainty she felt upon returning to herself. She shrugs helplessly.

 _I trust you,_ he signs.  _I don't understand, but I trust you._

Zelda lets the matter drop, but she rinses the words out in her mind for hours, tracing the ways they might have sounded in an archaic version of the song, what might have changed, which words captured an essence rather than a rhyme, and she sleeps that night following lexicons and words older than her relics and more ancient than her soul. Her dreams vary between a fevered search among the ruins of a great cathedral where she’s convinced she’ll find her father waiting for her, and a great, lonely sea that dries up and leaves proud, enormous creatures to die on the shore alone.

Their bodies’ history, their lives meaningless, and the song's melody weaves itself into every moment while her body slumbers on.

_Don’t forget me._

She awakens in the night and cannot sleep again, haunted by old halls and the flutelike echoes of melodies.

She pulls out her old notebooks and reads through her old translations again.

_Confirm._

“Confirm Ganon,” she says aloud. Link shifts in his sleep and she peeks over to make sure he’s still asleep.

 _It was never about sealing him, not literally,_ she realizes. _It was about sealing him and then remembering everything we did to do it. He’s still out there, growing, learning. Changing, perhaps._

You couldn’t seal fate, or destiny. Her story itself held inside it the truth of Ganon’s constant return. He was a part of this land, a part of her. A part of the Hero who shifted about in his sleep and muttered to himself at night.

 _Ganon will come back_ , she realizes, and she also realizes that she’s always known this. She’s always realized this truth. Purah’s task, the relics, her own obsession with the past and understanding its meanings; it all came together.

_I always knew my part. I just couldn’t accept it._

Her powers lay dormant inside her again, controlled and ready under her thumb, and with that power came knowledge, knowledge of herself and the world that came before her.

The world that might come after her lay inside her too.

She rifles through the pages until she comes to an empty section in the notebook she never finished. She hunts around in the bags until she finds her inkpot and a good quill.

And then she begins to write.

 

* * *

 

The sun rises on the sea of tents that grows a little bit more with every hour and as it shines on and illuminates the people, they rise and turn to the shadows of the castle, growing long before them. In the sun's light they can see the Queen herself, back in her castle. They catch glimpses of her knight, the Hero who travelled the world in her absence and defeated the Calamity, conversing with travelers from lands far away. The workers team up and on his signal they scale the castle’s walls with tools ready and backs strong.

Warriors from all over Hyrule flank the queen as she attends to her mysterious duties, incomprehensible to most everyone who overhears her speak, and she pens tome after tome in those days, passing each off in a stream towards the castle's safes. She receives visitors and gift-givers, men and women who offer their services for the kingdom, and often disappears into the royal tents with three or four messengers or foreign statesmen at a time.

The days pass like this, and the most frequent sight any Hylian will relay back to their village afterwards is this image: The queen standing with her back straight and her expression calm, measured and strong, while her knight leans on his great, sacred sword ever vigilant in his determination to assist and guard her. They speak without words, it’s said. He never leaves her side, it’s said. It's a grand romance, some say. It  _would_ be, everyone agrees. 

Zelda, for her part, tells Link exactly what she waited all those years to tell him. He considers it well worth the wait. 

Old women revise their old stories. The tales that Link hears on his journeys with his beloved between the castle and the small cottage in the tiny village start to sound like this:

 

_The princess tied herself up in the castle, leaving behind everything she loved and everything she knew to save her people. She sent her knight away and prayed he’d come back to another world, one where he could love and live and be, even if it were without her. But alas, she couldn’t face the darkness alone. The sword and the hero were keys to a puzzle that only she could solve, and her selflessness doomed her and saved us all._

_The knight awoke a century later, alone and forgotten, and he followed the trail the princess left and found her in the castle. He slew the beast and saved her._ _She came out of the castle with a great knowledge, a great love, and a great purpose. She rallied her kingdom and prepared for the next battle, and with that knowledge and wisdom and power came courage, and the Princess became Queen._

 

He confirms each one. 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This story became intensely important to me the more I wrote of it. This version of Zelda I created ended up absorbing a lot of the fears and anxieties I have been working through lately. Ah, the cruel incomprehensibility of the past.


End file.
